vs. 



V 















'bV" 







-^^0^ 



% 



*^r. CP 



.''\.ii^..% •"° v^* 




'o,. *yT.s* A 



.-^^ .. 



^oV" 











|-: %.^^ •' 







o > 

^ «V^ ^ *«>NO<> ^^ 



-^^0^ 

^^°^ 




". ^oV^ 













SPv!, 




-^^^.^^ 



'^^0^ 



U "__ «^ O, V* • ' ' » * ■^j. (V^ o « o •^ A> 




















■' \.^^ 'Mii' %./ *A": V*^ 








^ 







<> 'O • A 



G^ %b, ^vT'.'s' 



<^^ ,i'». ''^^ K^ .CO- ^- 





_ : /-% \^-- /\ _ , 







V.0^ 










* ■or ^Vi. ^^^.^ V 

o . . ' ^G^ "Ko^ "r^Tl'^ A 












'bV 



.^ 








'. '-^^0^ /, 







^^^^ 






/ 





A BONTOK MAN 



AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 



PEOPLES OF 
THE PHILIPPINES 







By A:1f. KROEBER 



PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 



HANDBOOK SERIES No. 8 



NEW YORK 
1919 




6 



.\<1 




wibu, 



T^ 



PREFACE. 

THIS Museum issues a series of handbooks of 
which this volume is the fourth deahng with 
primitive races. The earlier issues treat of 
restricted culture areas in North America, but the present 
volume presents the essential facts as to the racial and 
cultural characters of the Philippine Islands population. As 
will be seen in the following pages a large part of the Island 
population is Christian and far on the road to cultural 
assimilation. Neither in the Museum collections nor in this 
book do we attempt to describe the lives of these people, 
but onlyfstate their racial and historic relations to the Pagan 
and Mohammedan tribes still more or less successfully 
resisting the encroachments of European culture, j As in 
most studies of this kind, the" primitive peoples still surviving 
are taken as indications of what was once the prevailing cul- 
ture of the whole population. 

The racial exhibits in the American Museum of Natural 
History are grouped by halls, each hall containing collections 
from one geographical area. Thus one hall is devoted to the 
people of the Philippines and the neighboring East Indian 
islands. The collection in this hall furnishes illustrations of 
many subjects treated in this book. As a part of the wall 
decoration, there are many specimens of wood native to the 
islands, suggesting the floral and economic wealth of the 
country; but within the exhibition cases are objects selected 
to represent the skill and art of the less civilized tribes. The 
bulk of the collections came from the United States exhibit 
at the St. Louis Expedition of 1904, purchased and pre- 
sented by Morris K. Jesup in 1905. To this were added later 
the Laura E. Benedict Bagobo collection and the Frederick 
Starr collections, purchased from the Jesup Fund. In addi- 
tion generous donations of collections were made by William 
S. Kahnweiler, H. E. Bard, Charles H. Senff, and William 
Demuth. Dean C. Worcester presented his unrivaled collec- 
tion of photographs from which were taken many of the 
accompanying illustrations. 

We are also indebted to the University of California for the 
frontispiece. The maps and drawings were prepared by 
Mr. S. Ichikawa of the Museum staff. It may be added that 
the author, on leave of absence from the University of Cali- 
fornia, filled a temporary appointment in the Museum as 
Associate Curator in charge of the Philippine collections, 
during which interval this volume was written. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 3 

Introduction 7 

CHAPTER I 

The Islands and their Population 17 

The Islands. Continental Affiliations. Topography and Climate. Popu- 
lation. Black Peoples: The Negritos. Negrito Life. Brown Peoples. 
Indonesians and Malayans. The Principal Nationalities: Christian. 
Mohammedan Peoples. Pagan Tribes. Pagans of Luzon. Pagans of 
Mindanao. Pagans of Other Islands. 

CHAPTER II 
Speech 67 

CHAPTER III 

The Material Sides of Life 75 

Agriculture and Domestic Animals. Rice Culture. Terrace Irrigation. 
Various Food Plants. Tobacco and Betel. Hemp and Cotton. Houses. 
Religious Structures. Settlements. General Character of Industries. 
Pottery. Boats. Fire-making. Iron Industry. Copper, Bronze, and 
Gold. Baskets and Mats. Woven Textiles. Men's Clothing. Head- 
wear. Women's Dress. Hair, Teeth, and Tattoo. 

CHAPTER IV 
Society 133: 

The Barangay Community. Mohammedan Influences. Social Classes. 
The Sexes. Marriage. Law. Laws of the Northern Pagans. Codes of 
Other Tribes. Economic Life. Trade. War. Head-Hunting and the 
Debt of Life. Weapons. Bows and Blowguns. Shields. Armor and 
Firearms. 

CHAPTER V 
Religion 175 

Spirits and Gods. Souls. Sacrifice and Prayer. Ceremonial Motives. 
Religious Officials. Magic and Medicine. Taboos. Omens and Divina- 
tion. Mythology. Heroic Romances. Formulas. Explanatory Myths. 



Fables. 



CHAPTER VI 



Knowledge and Art 199' 

Astronomy. Use of Numbers. Sanskrit Loan Words. Writing. Art. 
Music. 

CHAPTER VII 

Summary and Conclusions 211 

Bibliography 215 

Index 217 



MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
MAPS 

PAGE 

1. Races of the East Indies 19 

2. Principal Islands, Rivers, Ranges, and Peaks of the Philippines 23 

3. Density of Population in 1903 27 

4 Pagans of Northern Luzon 60 

5. Some Philippine Languages 71 

6. Peoples of the Philippines opposite last page 



TEXT FIGURES 

A Bontok Man Frontispiece 

1. Negrito Man 32 

2. Negrito Girl 33 

3. Leg Ornament of Boar's Bristles. Negrito of Zambales 39 

4. Jew's Harp and Comb worn as Hair Ornament. Negrito . 41 

5. Guitar of Bamboo, with Strings Slit Loose. Negrito . . 41 

6. Bagobo Man with Bead-Embroidered Jacket .... 43 

7. BisayaGirl: Malayan Type ...... 44 

8. Tagalog: Malayan Type .45 

9. Nabaloi Woman 46 

10. Bontok Man equipped for War 46 

11. Hunting Snare. Mangy an 77 

12. Rice Terraces on Mountain Side. Ifugao 81 

13. Nabaloi Women weeding a Terraced Rice Field ... 82 

14. Incised Tube of Bamboo to hold Lime for Betel Chewing. 

Bagobo 89 

15. Tree House. Gaddang 92 

16. Moro Dwellings 93 

17. Red Jar with White Pattern, Bikol ; Moro Jar with Lid . . 100 

18. Moro Outrigger Canoes 102 

19. Use of the Fire Piston producing a Spark by Sudden Air 

Compression 104 

20. Steel Fighting Ax. Kalinga 107 

21. Ifugao Bolo or Work and Fighting Knife, with Sheath and 

Belt 108 

22. Swords of the Mohammedans 110 

23. Pipes of Pottery — Nabaloi — and Cast Brass — Bontok .112 

24. Moro Betel Boxes Cast in Brass . . . . . .113 

25. Brass Vase. Moro 115 

26. Philippine Baskets ' . 116 

27. Tinggian Women Weaving . . ■ 119 



b PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Page 

28. Bagobo Dance, Showing Dress and Weapons of Pagan Tribes 

influenced by Mohammedans 123 

29. Fihpino Hats 125 

30. Bagobo Ear Ornaments of Shell and Bead-Fringed Comb 

worn as a Hair Ornament 127 

31. Propulsive Weapons 166 

32. Roof-Shaped Northern Type of Rectangular Shield with 

Exaggerated Prongs. Kalinga 168 

33. Southern Type of Rectangular Shield with Scalloped Sides and 

Fringes. Bagobo 169 

34. Circular Type of Shield Used by Mohammedans. Samal 

Moro 170 

35. Moro Brass Helmet imitated from an Ancient Spanish Style; 

and Moro Body Armor of Buffalo Horn Plates and Brass 
Links . . . 171 

36. Moro Cannon . . . 172 

37. Carved Figure of a Spirit. Nabaloi 178 

38. Religious Sacrifice of a Dog. Bontok 181 

39. Philippine Alphabets 204 

40. Patterns incised on Bamboo Lime Boxes .... 206 

41. Ifugao and Negrito Spoons 207 

42. Moro Musical Instrument 208 



INTRODUCTION 

THERE are several things that make the peoples of 
the PhiHppines interesting. 
First, is the size and position of the islands. 
They are the largest of the possessions of the United 
States; and the only one of consequence in the Eastern 
Hemisphere. 

Then, the Filipinos form a considerable and a growing 
nationality. There are nearly ten millions of them — 
more than the population of the majority of European 
countries. The increase of numbers has been steady for 
several centuries, and the resources of the islands are 
so great that there is every reason to expect the growth 
to continue. 

Finally, the Philippines furnish an unusual story to 
the student of the development of civilization. Layer 
after layer of culture is recognizable, giving a complete 
transition from the most primitive condition to full 
participation in Western civilization. This is a most 
happy circumstance for the historian, because of its 
rarity outside of Europe and western Asia. In 
aboriginal America, in most of Africa, in Australia, 
over large tracts of the Oceanic island world, the 
student of civilization finds only peoples that lack a 
background of history. Nation differs from nation and 
tribe from tribe in these regions; but it is usually 
difficult to be sure how any given people differs from its 
condition of only a few hundred years before. The 
investigator of these areas is therefore compelled to 
begin his operations almost wholly in the field of geo- 
graphy. It is only after he has laboriously worked out 
all possible classifications on the basis of locality, that 
he can commence to convert this knowledge into an 
expression of probable time sequence of development. 
Even then, his course must be devious and his results 



8 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

largely hypothetical. The problem in these parts of the 
world may be compared to the task of tracing the life 
history of an individual without direct knowledge of the 
events of his career, merely as a reconstruction from his 
condition at the present moment, his relations with other 
personalities, and such documents and tangible evi- 
dences as he may carry with him. Such a reconstruction 
is not of course impossible, but it is naturally difficult, 
indirect, and approximate. 

In the Philippines it is true that direct historical 
records also go back only four hundred years. But a 
constellation of circumstances has brought it about 
that the various ancient and modern influences that 
have reached the islands are often traceable to their 
sources. The result is that whereas in Africa or native 
America we can almost never tell offhand whether a 
particular institution or name or invention is three 
hundred or three thousand years old, and large masses 
of circumstantial evidence must be analyzed before an 
answer to such questions may be even attempted, we 
can, in the Philippines, very often see that one custom 
is very ancient and primitive, that a second must have 
reached the archipelago subsequently and from a foreign 
source, and that the third is a qiiite recent importation. 

In other words, the stratification of civilization is 
much better preserved in the Philippines than in most 
other parts of the world which the ethnologist deals 
with. The task of tracing this stratification, and dis- 
tinguishing through it the outlines of development, is 
therefore comparatively fruitful. This does not mean 
that obscure points are lacking and that no problems 
remain to be solved. But the contours of the cultural 
events of the last two thousand years are substantially 
clear. We can peel off layer after layer of civilization 
and come to its original kernel with some assurance of 



INTRODUCTION 9 

certainty and without being forced to draw too heavi ly 
on imagination. 

The first of these layers, the most continuous, and by 
far the most important poHtically and economically, 
may be called the Christian one. Since their conquest 
by Legazpi in 1564-71, the most fertile, accessible, and 
populous parts of the Philippines were under Spanish 
rule for more than three centuries. Wherever Spanish 
power was at all firm, the natives were promptly, and in 
the main thoroughly, converted to Christianity. Near 
the centers of population they came also to live under 
economic conditions approximating those of European 
countries. A good deal was done for education ; enough, 
at any rate, for the first American census, made only a 
few years after the taking over of the islands from Spain, 
to show that nearly one-half of the population was in 
some measure literate. Certain classes had become as 
thoroughly cultivated, in the European sense, as 
Europeans. The mass of the population retained many 
of the older customs; but the dominant aspects of their 
life were western and Christian. Nearly nine-tenths of 
the inhabitants of the Philippines are today in this 
condition. 

In the extreme south of the archipelago, in and about 
the great island of Mindanao, followers of Mohammed 
had begun to establish themselves about 1380, less than 
two centuries before the coming of the Spaniards. Still 
later, they had obtained a foothold farther north in the 
islands, as on Mindoro, and on Manila Bay, where 
ruler and court were Mohammedan when the Spaniards 
arrived. In this district, Mohammedanism quickly 
yielded to Christianity without leaving a trace; but in 
the south it long resisted Spanish encroachment by 
force of arms, and even at the present day maintains 
its sway over several hundred thousand natives. On 



10 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

the side of religion, the effect of Mohammedanism on its 
converts has been fully as thorough as that of Chris- 
tianity. The latter rehgion, however, was imparted by 
a dominant Caucasian race which continued to hold itself 
more or less aloof from the natives, whereas Moham- 
medanism was introduced by kindred East Indian 
immigrants who quickly amalgamated with the abo- 
rigines. Christianity and Spanish occupation also' 
involved rather deep-going economic change. The 
Mohammedan contented himself with exacting such 
tribute as he could without radically altering existing 
conditions. Except therefore for a few importations, 
especially in the matter of weapons, he worked a less 
profound change in the general culture of the natives 
than the Christian. 

Back of these two great movements of religion and 
general culture, lies a deeper one, the most determinative 
of Philippine civilization. This is an influence, or 
rather a set of influences, emanating from India. These 
influences did not bring a definitely crystallized religious 
cult, or if so, the cult had already disappeared before 
the discovery of the islands by Europeans. They did 
import a mass of religious ideas, practices, and names, a 
considerable body of Sanskrit words, a system of writ- 
ing, the art of metal working, a vast body of mechanical 
and industrial knowledge, and unquestionably a much 
greater degree of cultivation and refinement than had 
existed previously. 

There is no reason to believe that the bulk of this 
immensely valuable cultural material was brought into 
the Philippines by Hindus coming directly from India. 
If so, we should expect to find ruins and other ancient 
remains as evidences of their occupancy; and such have 
not been discovered. It is well known that all the East 
Indies were subjected to very deep Hindu influences. 



INTRODUCTION 11 

In Java, where this imported civihzation reached its 
culmination, its introduction is put in the period from 
the second to the sixth centuries after Christ. The first 
beginnings may have been made even before. What one 
island knew, it tended to impart to the next. It is 
quite conceivable that in this way a large proportion 
of Indian culture reached the Philippines without a 
single Hindu having ever set foot upon them. It is of 
course also possible that expeditions led by Indian 
princes or adventurers now and then established them- 
selves on the islands and thus aided in the more gradual 
diffusion that was taking place. We know, however, 
that very few Arabs accompanied the expeditions which 
first carried Mohammedanism to the Philippines. The 
immigrants were Mohammedanized Malays from Johore 
and Sumatra, and, relatively to the indigenous popula- 
tion, few in numbers. As the Hindus have never been 
a maritime nation, it is likely that the manner in which 
their civilization reached the Philippines was even less 
direct than Mohammedanism — that is, more completely 
dependent upon native channels of transmission. 

The Indian influence, perhaps because it was older 
and continued longer, was much more pervasive than 
the Mohammedan one. It was most profound, of 
course, along the coast and in the lowlands, but pene- 
trated even to the mountainous interior of the larger 
islands. There is no tribe in the Philippines, no matter 
how primitive and remote, in whose culture of today 
elements of Indian origin cannot be traced. 

Only the structure of society seems to have been 
affected very little. The Mohammedan brought the 
idea of kingship — of the sultan or dato — and with it 
that of the state. Thus it was that the Mohammedan 
tribes were the only ones in the Philippines who pos- 
sessed any political organization, and through this 



12 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

organization were the only ones able to resist Spanish 
subjection for any considerable time. The Hindu how- 
ever, though he had long been familiar with the insti- 
tution of kingship, did not establish kingdoms, nor did 
he introduce his distinctive system of caste. His 
greatest contributions to the civilization of the Philip- 
pines were clearly on the side of knowledge and thought 
and religion, as has been characteristic of his part 
in the history of culture at all times. 

Contemporaneous with these contacts or indirect 
transmissions from India, and long surviving them, 
was a set of relations between southern China and the 
Philippines. China is very much nearer than India and 
has enjoyed a high measure of civilization for at least 
as long. As far back as the ninth century, the Chinese 
are likely to have visited the Philippines ; and from the 
thirteenth on, their records tell of trade and describe 
the habits of the natives. For many hundreds of years, 
pottery vessels of certain special types continued to be 
exported from China to the Philippines and Borneo and 
came to constitute the most treasured heirlooms even 
of interior tribes that had never set eyes on a junk. 
Today, the gongs which the uncivilized Filipinos use as 
one of their chief musical instruments, or at least their 
bronze, is said to come from China. Many other 
instances of trade relations might be cited; yet it is 
curious that with all this prolonged contact only 
material objects seem to have been carried from the 
more civilized to the less civilized country. There is 
not a single institution, piece of knowledge, or religious 
belief current in the Philippines that can be derived 
with any certainty from China. The difference in this 
respect between India and China is very remarkable, 
and illustrates significantly the distinctive tempers of 
these two great nationalities. 



INTRODUCTION 13 

Behind and below all the foregoing is the native East 
Indian or Malaysian core of primitive culture with 
which the Filipinos must have begun their career. This 
kernel or substratum is preserved in its purest form 
among the inland mountaineers of northern Luzon, the 
largest island in the archipelago. This group of tribes, 
sometimes designated collectively under the name 
Igorot, were less affected than any others by Hindu in- 
fluences. Mohammedanism did not reach them at all, 
and Christianity mainly in its economic aspects and at 
that chiefly at the fringes. By subtracting from their 
life, as it has survived to the present day, whatever 
can be recognized as Hindu in origin, we obtain a fairly 
definite picture of what the older Filipino and Malay- 
sian culture must have been. On matching this picture 
with that presented by the more advanced tribes, we 
can recognize what is primitive among the latter; and 
find it to be no inconsiderable element. The constitu- 
tion of society, the relations of man to man within the 
group, and of group to group, are still essentially of the 
pre-Christian and pre-Hindu type over most of the 
Philippines. 

Here our positive knowledge ends. There should be 
another chapter to the story, because we know that 
another stratum of culture must have underlain the 
early Malaysian one. We know this because there are 
remnants of a population that is distinct from the 
Malaysians and must have preceded it. In several of 
the Philippine islands there survive some thousands of 
small, broad-nosed, curly-haired, black people, — Negri- 
tos, ''little blacks," the Spaniards called them, and the 
name has remained with them. Physically, they are 
fundamentally of a different type from the brown, 
lanky-haired Malaysian whose affinities are Mongo- 
loid. So distinctive, in fact, are the two races that it is 



14 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

inconceivable that they could have evolved side by side 
in the same region. The localization of the Negritos, 
and their inferiority in arts as well as numbers, is such 
that the first Spanish settlers were driven to the conclu- 
sion that they must represent the aboriginal inhabitants 
of the Philippines who had been in possession before the 
first members of the brown race reached the shores of 
the archipelago. No other view regarding them appears 
tenable even today, or seems ever to have been pro- 
pounded. 

Now, the Negrito of the dim pre-Malaysian days must 
have had some rudiments of culture of his own, simple 
and savage though it undoubtedly was; and a knowl- 
edge of this would certainly be of the greatest interest. 
Unfortunately however he has always been so weak and 
backward, as compared with the overwhelming pre- 
ponderance of the Malaysian, that ever since we know 
anything of him he has been in a position of cultural 
dependence and parasitism toward the brown man. He 
has entirely lost the distinctive language which he 
must once have had ; and while his culture is extremely 
meager, practically everything in it is only a simplified 
imitation of what the Filipino proper possesses. It is 
only his racial type, his blood and physical appearance, 
that the Negrito has maintained; and this is usually 
mixed along the borders of the regions which he occupies, 
just as strains of Negrito blood are often recognizable 
among the Filipino tribes who are neighbors to him. 
The Negrito is so utterly different from everything else 
human in the islands that it will be necessary to consider 
him more in detail in a separate section. But unfortu- 
nately all that can be said about him from the point of 
view of the history of civilization is, that while he must 
have had a form of culture antecedent to all others that 
we know in the Philippines, this culture has been so 



INTRODUCTION 15 

worn down by thousands of years of contact with more 
advanced peoples, that its peculiar qualities can only be 
surmised. 

Such, in its broad outlines and viewed retrospectively, 
has been the history of man and his institutions in the 
Philippines. In the pages that follow, the native 
civilization will bfe taken up more in detail according to 
its various aspects of economics, society, industry, 
thought, and knowledge, with an attempt to preserve 
under each head the guiding thread of sequence here 
sketched. 



Chapter I 
THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 

The Islands. The Philippines are a group of over 
four hundred considerable islands — plus about three 
thousand smaller ones — which with few exceptions are 
separated from one another only by narrow channels. 
There is probably no other archipelago in the world that 
contains as many islands so compactly situated. The 
total land area aggregates 115,000 square miles, or 
somewhat more than the state of Arizona and a little 
less than Great Britain and Ireland combined. The 
largest island is Luzon in the north; the next, Mindanao 
in the south. In a geographical sense, these two islands 
are the mainstay of the archipelago ; they make up two- 
thirds of its area. Between them lies the central or 
Bisayan group, which consists of numerous small islands 
interspersed among seven of medium size: Panay, 
Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Samar, and Masbate. The 
largest of these is about one-eighth the size of Luzon. 
Outside of Luzon, Mindanao, and the central group, the 
Philippine Islands are small, and often lie in chains 
which form bridges, as it were, to other parts of the East 
Indies. 

The first of these bridges reaches northward from the 
northern end of Luzon, and is obviously nothing but a 
continuation of the main cordillera that follows the 
east coast of this island. This chain consists of the 
small Babuyanes and Batanes, which stretch in the 
direction of Formosa. It is said that from the farthest 
of the Batanes, Formosa is visible in clear weather. 
This large island in turn fronts the coast of China at 
no great distance. 

The main cordillera traverses the entire irregular 
length of Luzon, reappears in Samar and Leyte, and 
again forms a steep wall along the eastern coast of 

17 



18 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Mindanao. Here it becomes submerged in the Pacific 
Ocean, although its progress can be followed in its 
peaks. These constitute the chain known as the Sangir 
Islands, which lead directly to the northern extremity of 
the great island of Celebes, whose greatest length the 
range again traverses. 

Another and more westerly cordillera can be traced 
through the greater part of Luzon. It dips into the sea 
somewhat sooner than the eastern, but rises once more 
to form the backbone of the Island of Negros, and again 
the western range of Mindanao. Here it submerges 
again to form the Sulu Islands, of which the chief are 
Basilan, Sulu or Jolo, and Tawi-Tawi. These are not 
very large, but they are well known as the center of 
Mohammedan influence in the Philippines. The general 
course of the chain of Sulu islands is southwest ward, and 
they reach very nearly to the northeastern tip of the 
great island of Borneo, in which the same folding of 
the earth's crust of which they are part can be traced 
for a long distance. 

The fourth of the arms which the Philippines reach 
out toward other parts of the East Indies is formed by 
the islands of Mindoro and Palawan. These stretch in 
a southwesterly direction from central Luzon to north- 
ern Borneo. Mindoro is very near Luzon, but the chan- 
nel separating the two is deep, and there is also deep 
water between it and Palawan. Mindoro appears there- 
fore to have been cut off from the remainder of the group 
for a considerable geological period. This fact is re- 
flected in certain peculiarities of its animal and plant 
life. It is interesting that in its human history it has 
also always maintained a certain aloofness. 

Palawan or Paragua, although very narrow, extends 
some 250 miles, and is the third longest island in the 
Philippines. The history of its human occupation is 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 19 

similar to that of Mindoro. Palawan is separated from 
Borneo by only slight depths of sea, and geographically 
forms nothing but an outlying extension of this island 
with which its flora and fauna are definitely connected. 

Continental Affiliations. The East Indies are 
divided by geologists and biologists into two great 
halves, a western and an eastern. The former consti- 
tutes a more or less submerged part of the continent of 
Asia ; the eastern half is closely linked with Australia, 
and at one time formed a continuous land mass with 
New Guinea and that continent. In the great southern 
chain of the East Indies, the dividing line between these 
two continental areas passes through the narrow but 
deep channel which separates the islands of Bali and 
Lombok and then continues northward through the 
Straits of Macassar. Sumatra, Java, and Borneo are 
the great islands with Asiatic affiliations; Celebes, the 
Moluccas, and New Guinea, the principal ones that link 
up with Australia. The animal life of the two divisions 
is markedly distinct. In the west, such well-known 
forms of the Asiatic mainland as the elephant, rhino- 
ceros, tapir, tiger, arid orang utan are found; in the 
east, marsupials and birds of paradise. 

Racially and historically, a similar division is notable. 
The western islands are inhabited wholly by a brown, 
straight-haired people, the so-called Malay race of the 
older books, whose primary relationships are unques- 
tionably Mongoloid and therefore Asiatic. In the east- 
ern half of the Indies, black, broad-nosed, and wavy or 
curly-haired people predominate, in fact constitute the 
sole native type of New Guinea and Australia, and reach 
far out into the Pacific, where they have given its name 
to Melanesia, the region of ''black islanders." These 
people, while not identical with the African Negroes, 
are very similar to them. 




4^W'^ •• •• 
W Mm 2 £ 

■^ TO^ O M '^ 

MtnpqOBQ 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 21 

It is true that an eastward advance of the brown 
Mongoloids has carried them a short distance beyond 
the channels that separate the two continental areas. 
Celebes, although in the Australian half of the Indies, 
is Malaysian in race; so are parts of the Moluccas, and 
at least the western end of the island chain that stretches 
from Java towards New Guinea, At these points, then, 
the human distribution has come to deviate somewhat 
from that of the lower animals and plants and the geo- 
logical formations. But the areas in question are not 
very large, and after every allowance is made the cor- 
respondence of the human factor with the geological, 
floral, and faunal ones is much more significant than the 
discrepancies. 

Even religion and type of customs have tended to 
coincide rather closely with the geographical line of 
division. Mohammedanism has spread about as far 
eastward as the brown peoples, but has been most 
deeply implanted in the islands of the Asiatic continen- 
tal area. At an earlier period, Hinduism penetrated to 
about an equal distance. Yet the islands in which the 
influence of India was really powerful, as attested by the 
ruins in Hindu style of architecture and sculpture, are 
precisely those which belong with Asia: namely, 
Sumatra, Borneo, Java. Celebes and the other islands 
of the Australian half of the East Indies contain no such 
remains. 

The Philippines lie to the north of all the other East ^ 
Indies and virtually in the deep-water channels which 1 
separate the two continental areas. Since two series of 
islands connect them with Borneo, which is Asiatic; 
a third with Celebes, which belongs with Australia; 
and a fourth chain links them with Formosa, close to 
China, it is conceivable that the natural history con- 
nections of the Philippines might be either predomi- 



22 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

nantly with the Asiatic East Indies, or the Australian 
East Indies, or with the mainland of Asia. As a matter 
of fact, geographers and biologists are somewhat in 
doubt how to affiliate them. There are relations observ- 
able in all three directions. On the whole Philippine 
land animal life is meager. It is not that the animals 
are scarce, but that the number of species is small. 
The great mammals of Borneo and Sumatra are lacking; 
and the most characteristic Papuan forms are equally 
absent. 

As regards human inhabitants, the case is very much 
clearer. Up to ninety-nine percent of his numbers, the 
Filipino is not only Mongoloid, but specificallyMalaysian 
— brown, lank-haired, slender, rather short, and inclined 
to round-headedness. Moreover, he is wholly Malay- 
sian in speech. His culture history points in the same 
direction. His aboriginal stock of knowledge and 
customs is closely similar to the primitive culture that 
survives in the interior of Borneo and Sumatra. The 
outside influences which have shaped his life are those 
which have emanated from India and Arabia. The 
peculiar primitive culture found in New Guinea and 
Australia, with its poverty on the material side of life 
and its elaboration of social institutions, is totally 
unrepresented in the Philippines. 

Topography and Climate. The larger Philip- 
pine islands, especially Luzon and Mindanao, contain 
considerable areas of lowland swamp and lakes. The 
general character of the archipelago, however, like that 
of the other East Indies, is mountainous. In fact, it is 
quite remarkable, in aU this part of the world,, to what 
an altitude the mountains rise, compared with the size 
of the land masses. The highest peaks in the Philippines 
fall somewhat short of the greatest elevations reached in 
some other groups, but the altitudes of about eight 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 



23 









Map 2. PRINCIPAL ISLANDS, RIVERS, RANGES, AND PEAKS 
OF THE PHILIPPINES. 



24 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

thousand feet attained by Mount Mayon in Luzon and 
Kanlaon in Negros, of nearly nine thousand feet by 
Mount Halcon in Mindoro, and of over ten thousand 
feet by Mount Apo in Mindanao, are by no means in- 
conspicuous. The country in general, therefore, is 
distinctly rugged, and the dominant feature of the geog- 
raphy is the juxtaposition of the sea and of steep 
ranges and high peaks with only a narrow belt of rich 
alluvial coast intervening. 

It is this lowland region that has always held the bulk 
of the population. Two-thirds of the modern inhabi- 
tants live on the coast, one-third in the interior. With 
an estimated eleven thousand miles of shore line in the 
archipelago, this proportion seems only natural. 

Nearly all the peaks are volcanic, many quiescent, but 
twelve of them permanently or intermittently active. 
There have been a number of disastrous eruptions within 
the historic period and no doubt many others in pre- 
historic times. So far as known, the effects of these 
outbursts have, however, always been local, and while 
they have caused considerable loss of life and property 
in the districts immediately affected, the islands as a 
whole, and the course of human history on them, seem 
not to have been seriously disturbed by these cataclysms. 
The same may be said of the earthquakes which are 
both frequent and violent in most of the Philippines. 
The city of Manila has several times suffered severely; 
but the natives, before their Christianization, building 
their houses wholly of wood or bamboo and maintaining 
no public works, have never endured more than passing 
inconveniences. The typhoons which visit the northern 
and central islands probably caused much more destruc- 
tion. 

The Philippines reach from the fifth degree of north 
latitude to the nineteenth. They therefore lie wholly 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 25 

within the tropics, although the Batanes group, north 
of Luzon, stretches to within httle more than a hundred 
miles of the limits of this zone. The temperature, as 
might be expected in an island climate, is remarkably 
equable. The warmest and coldest months in Manila 
differ by less than four degrees centigrade, and the 
greatest observed differences are only twenty-two 
degrees apart. The climate, with the exception of a few 
localities, is an unusually healthy one for the tropics. 
The rainfall is very variable, as might be expected from 
the irregular configuration of land and sea and the inter- 
spersed character of the mountain ranges. It is however 
generally fairly heavy, ranging from forty to one hun- 
dred and fifty inches a year, or from two to four times as 
much as in most parts of the temperate zone. Even 
those districts in the interior of Northern Luzon which 
are sometimes spoken of as semi-arid, must be under- 
stood as being so only in a comparative sense; they 
probably receive more rain than most parts of the 
United States. The precipitation is, on the whole, 
seasonal, but the seasons vary as much as the amount of 
rainfall. Some districts enjoy two rainy seasons, others 
only one. On some islands one flank is in the dry 
period while the other is in the wet. Such a thing as a 
completely arid season is however almost unknown in 
the Philippines. There is probably no district in which 
some rain does not normally fall during every month 
of the year. 

The combination of continuous tropical warmth and 
great precipitation produces the usual result; a rapid 
growth of a heavy and luxuriant vegetation. Practically 
the whole surface of the Philippines is naturally clothed 
with dense forest: the regions — like parts of northern 
Luzon — which are now more or less denuded, appearing 
to be so through human agencies. Over most of the 



26' PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

islands, in fact, man is forced to maintain a constant 
struggle against the powerful growth impulse of the 
vegetation, which threatens everywhere to choke out his 
means of existence or reduce him to a parasitic condi- 
tion. Hardly is a patch cleared for agriculture when the 
jungle or rank growths of tough coarse grass invade it. 
The second year's crop is almost invariably inferior to 
the first, and it is only in the minority of instances that 
a field can be cultivated with profit a fourth or fifth time. 
With more labor in checking the wild vegetation than 
the produce is worth, the only recourse is to start fresh, 
and this the native has done from time immemorial. 
He burns off and clears another few acres of the forest, 
only to abandon this after a few seasons. This is the 
well-known kaingin system, which has been enormously 
destructive of valuable timber, but is the only feasible 
method of working the soil under primitive and semi- 
civilized conditions and without irrigation. Where 
commercially utilizable crops such as Manila hemp, 
sugar, coffee, and tobacco are raised, a more permanent 
plantation method is practicable. But even in the case 
of these staples the native often finds it more profitable 
to abandon his field than to continue the difficult 
struggle. 

Population. The fertility of the islands is so great 
that they are capable of supporting an enormous popu- 
lation, and, relatively to many other parts of the world, 
they have apparently done so for a long time past. 
The number of inhabitants in the archipelago at the 
time of the Spanish discovery and conquest in the six- 
teenth century is put by some students at half a million, 
by others at somewhat more. These are small figures 
as compared with the nine to ten millions that at present 
find easy subsistence ; but they are large numbers for a 
people that could at most be said to have attained 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 



27 



I I ^^^^ ttiari 5 f-o 3 square mile. 



PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 

DENSITY OF POPULATION 
1903 




Map 3. DENSITY OF POPULATION IN 1903 

sumed forX^^prepir'it^on^T^h-f '''"^'t^''^K'''^ °"^ fourth greater than was as- 
the designation of certan«rL- f?' ^""^ ^^"^ Principal change made would be 
shades darker The TTnitpH If + '" *^^ mterior of northern Luzon one or two 
hereThot^^y th^^.iyd^^llfi^fr.e^^htdl^Si'ed" b-<^'- ^-^^ -to the Cass 



28 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

barely to semi-civilization. If we accept the population 
of the archipelago at the time of discovery as approxi- 
mately two-thirds of a million, it contained then about 
as many souls as lived in what is now the United States 
in an area twenty-five or thirty times as great. Even 
at the lowest computation, five inhabitants per square 
mile must be allowed the Philippines in the pre- 
European period. This is a higher figure than prevailed 
in any regions of the aboriginal New World other than 
certain parts of Mexico and Peru. 

An acre of rice grown under irrigation or in swampy 
land supports from three to five persons, or very nearly 
an average household, in Java, in the Christianized 
portions of the Philippines, and among the primitive 
mountaineers of Luzon. As the labor required to farm 
such a tract is in most cases rather moderate and leaves 
certain seasons of the year entirely free, it is clear both 
how a considerable condensation of population could 
have taken place in prehistoric times, and why the 
population has tended to increase steadily at a consider- 
able rate ever since. In 1591 Spanish tribute lists 
indicated a population, at the estimated ratio of four 
souls to one tribute, of 667,000. This figure excludes all 
the unsubjected mountain tribes and all the Moham- 
medans; in fact, almost the whole of the island of 
Mindanao. For two centuries increase continued, 
though rather slowly. In 1800 there were about a 
million and a half Christians in the archipelago. By 
1840 this number had doubled, and by 1887 had doubled 
again, to six millions. The American census of 1903 
showed nearly seven million Christians, and the latest 
estimate, for 1916, reckons 8,400,000; to whom more 
than a million Pagans, Mohammedans, and foreigners 
must be added. The present rate of increase is at least 
one and one-half percent annually, and unless adversely 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 29 

affected by social causes which have not yet developed , 
the native population should attain twenty millions 
within forty years. In fact, it does not seem inconceiv- 
able that within a century the population may reach 
a hundred millions. 

This may appear an extravagant estimate; but it 
must be remembered that Java, an island not much 
larger than Luzon alone, now contains thirty million 
souls, or fifteen times as many as a hundred and forty 
years ago. Only a tenth of the area of the Philippines 
is at present under cultivation. There would therefore 
be room for a hundred million people to live with some 
comfort in the archipelago even without improvement in 
methods of agriculture. The subprovince of Ifugao, 
inhabited by the distinctly primitive tribe of the same 
name, is computed to contain 132,000 inhabitants 
with a total plane area of perhaps 750 square miles. The 
district is extremely rugged, and less than fifty square 
miles of it are actually cultivated, the lesser half of these 
being in rice. This means that more than two thousand 
people working with primitive tools derive their sub- 
sistence from each square mile cultivated. These truly 
astonishing conditions need only be appreciated to 
make almost any prophecy of the future populousness 
of the Philippines seem justifiable. 

With these half-tamed, head-hunting Ifugao living 
more than 170 to the square mile in their mountains, 
it is not surprising that certain of the civilized districts 
show an enormous congestion, far greater, in fact, than 
any parts of Europe but those industrially most active. 
Northern, central, and southern Luzon, as well as at 
least four of the central islands, contain tracts that 
sustain more than five hundred persons to the mile. 
In 1820, the ratio for the United States was five. The 
only portions of the Philippines that fall below this 



30 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

figure today are certain areas in the interior of Min- 
danao and two wild mountain ranges in Luzon. Even 
Mindoro and Palawan, the most sparsely settled islands, 
contain populations of thirteen and eight to the mile 
when considered as a whole, or more than many of our 
western states; while Luzon, with an area equal to that 
of Pennsylvania, but without immigration, manufac- 
tures, or industries other than agriculture, supports 
half as many inhabitants. 

It cannot be assumed, because the population today, 
after more than three centuries of Spanish rule, has 
become so dense, that it would have arrived at the same 
high total had the natives been left to themselves. But 
it is interesting that what the Spaniard accomplished 
was to do away with the social causes that had been 
restraining the natural impulse to increase which had 
long been latent in the Filipino. He did not increase 
his power of drawing subsistence from the soil. He 
introduced order, limited piracy, abolished human 
sacrifice, suppressed war, head-hunting, all the endless 
feuds that not only claimed thousands annually but 
destroyed homes and plantations and rendered life 
forever unsettled. As soon as these checks began to be 
removed, the population increased of itself; once they 
were definitely eliminated, it grew fast and steadily. 
New land of course was reclaimed, and where conditions 
permitted, as in the irrigated districts, kept under 
permanent cultivation. 

But the available soil was utilized only in small part 
after all, and its yield per acre or mile remained nearly 
constant. The plow was introduced, and the buffalo 
yoked to it, where wooden spades and the hands had 
sufficed before. This change reduced the labor which 
the Filipino spent on his subsistence ; it did not greatly 
increase his food supply. Had the Filipino been able to 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 31 

devise an efficient political organization and stable 
government for himself, there is no doubt that his indus- 
trial mechanisms, combined with the fertility of his 
country, would have enabled him to become, even in the 
pre-European period, several times more populous than 
he was at his discovery. 

Black Peoples: The Negritos. The Negrito, the 
earliest inhabitant of the Philippines, is a most peculiar 
type of humanity. He is black in the sense in which the 
African Negro is black, and his hair is thick, short, and 
woolly He can and often does grow a full beard, and his 
trunk bears a perceptible coating of body hair His 
jaws protrude, but the face tapers to a narrow chin His 
head IS well rounded, its width averaging almost exactly 
five-sixths of the length. The nose is extremely broad 
there are about as many individuals in which the trans- 
verse diameter of this organ exceeds its greatest length 
as the reverse. This is of course a Negroid trait ' 

But the most marked characteristic of the Negrito 
that which has earned him his name and suffices to set 
him off sharply from all true Negroes, is his diminutive 
stature He is truly a pygmy, with an average height 
equivalent to that of a thirteen year old American boy 
Nearly every group that has been measured shows a 
stature of appreciably less than 150 cm., or five feet 
ihe women, of course, are proportionally shorter The 
smgle known group of Negrito affinity which runs a few 
inches taller, the Mamanua of Mindanao, may be 
assumed to have acquired its increased stature through 
intermixture with Malaysian neighbors. At the same 
tune, the Negrito is in no sense a dwarf, nor does he 
1^17/ "^f! *^e impression of being an essentially 
underfed and stunted variety of man. The head is not 

tZr rT'"Y ^^'^'' ^^^ '^' b°d^ i^ g^n^ral is 
neatly and cleanly symmetrical. 




Fig. 1. NEGRITO MAN 



32 




Fig. 2. NEGRITO GIRL 



33 



34 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

We have then before us a thoroughly separate and 
apparently ancient type of man which cannot possibly 
be regarded as a variety or modification of the race that 
constitutes the bulk of Philippine population. 

The Negrito lives in scattered bands in a variety of 
localities, but always in the forested mountains. Four 
or five of these regions are in Luzon, one in Mindanao, 
and one in Palawan. These groups often bear diverse 
appellations : thus the two last-mentioned are known as 
Mamanua and Batak, respectively. The name Aeta 
has often been applied to the Negritos as a whole; it is 
the designation given the race in the language of the 
Tagalog; but the Tagalog were acquainted with only a 
small proportion of the stock. 

The number of undoubted Negritos in the Philippines 
is probably between thirty and forty thousand. They 
constitute a small fraction of one percent of the total 
population of the islands. There are more Chinese im- 
migrants than survivors of this, the most primitive of 
the native races. 

The generally accepted theory that the Negrito origi- 
nally held all or most of the Philippines, is borne out by 
the fact that at the time of discovery he was more 
widely diffused than at present. The Bisayan island of 
Negros derives its name from having harbored a dis- 
tinctly black people, who can scarcely have been any- 
thing but Negritos. In its interior, as well as in the 
central mountains of the two other large Bisayan islands 
of Panay and Samar, there live today uncivilized people 
who have sometimes been described as Negritos, while 
other observers have classified them as rude Malaysians. 
The islands of Gimaras off Panay, and Polillo to the 
east of Luzon, also contain people in whom a distinct 
Negrito strain is probable. There are moreover groups 
in southern Luzon that may or may not contain a Negrito 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 35 

element. Most of these little peoples of doubtful or 
partial Negrito affinities were classified in the first 
American census as "Bukidnon," an apt native term 
meaning Hill people. The name is however unfortunate 
in omitting all reference to their supposed physical 
type ; and doubly so, because Bukidnon has now become 
the official and accepted designation of an important 
pagan tribe in Mindanao which is entirely free of any 
suspicion of containing Negrito elements. The scattered 
half Negrito or doubtful Negrito groups are therefore 
best brought together under their Spanish appellation of 
Monteses, in English, ''Hill Men." While it is impor- 
tant to recognize that they are quite clearly not a unit, 
there is little doubt that at least some of their bands con- 
tain a decided Negrito element, and in a few it may pre- 
ponderate. The aggregate number of these Hill people 
is perhaps somewhat greater than that of the pure 
Negrito, but probably falls short of fifty thousand. 

There are at least two other parts of the East Indies 
in which the presence of Negritos has been definitely 
confirmed. One of these is in the interior of the Malay 
Peninsula, where the Semang are of this type; the other 
group comprises the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands 
in the Indian Ocean north of Sumatra. Both these 
groups agree with the Philippine Negritos in being 
excessively short, black-skinned, frizzly-haired, round- 
headed, and broad-nosed. There have also been reports 
of Negritos or Negrito-like people in other parts of the 
East Indies, as in Java, Borneo, and New Guinea, but 
these have all been disputed, and the most conservative 
opinion of the present day holds their case to be un- 
proved. 

It is rather difficult to understand the distribution of 
the Negritos in three such remote spots as the Philip- 
pines, the Malay Peninsula, and the Andaman Islands. 



36 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

The question naturally arises how it is that if they once 
occupied the intervening and surrounding islands and 
have been submerged by the subsequent Malaysians 
without leaving a trace, they have been able to main- 
tain themselves in full purity of type in these three 
regions alone. It is possibly significant in this connec- 
tion that the three undoubted Negrito areas in this 
part of the world are all situated near the extreme 
northern limits of the East Indies. 

It is also certain that there is a very close similarity 
of physical type between the East Indian Negritos and 
the Negrillos or pygmy blacks of Central Africa. Most 
students are inclined to identify these two far-flung 
groups as members of the same race. This of course 
makes the question of their origin and dispersion still 
more mysterious. Several theories have been pro- 
pounded in explanation, but since not one of these can 
muster any direct evidence in its support, it would 
hardly be profitable to discuss them here. 

We should probably feel much more certain of under- 
standing the Negrito problem if there were a common 
Negrito language; but, with one exception, no trace of 
such a peculiar speech has been discovered. The African 
pygmies speak dialects of the Bantu tongue which 
prevails among their full-sized neighbors. The Semang 
speech appears to be largely a somewhat corrupt and 
antiquated Malay. All the search that has been made 
in the Philippines has failed to reveal any peculiar 
Negrito language, or even any positive element that 
might be construed as a remnant of a former distinctive 
speech. The Philippine Negrito speaks Filipino: in 
fact that particular variety of Philippine speech that 
happens to prevail among the brown men of his district. 
Wherever his language has been recorded, it is nothing 
but a local patois of Tagalog, Cagayan, Sambal, Bikol, 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 37 

or whatever the Christian or pagan Malaysian of the 
region may talk. It is extremely likely that this was not 
always the case and that the language of his own which 
the Negrito must have possessed when he was the sole or 
principal owner of the islands has only gradually gone 
out of use, owing to his insignificant numbers as com- 
pared with the Malaysian, and because of the cultural 
dependence in which he has always stood toward the 
latter. 

The Andamanese speak a peculiar language which it 
has not yet been possible to connect with any other 
variety of human speech. This they seem to have 
preserved only because the remoteness and small size of 
their islands drew no immigrants and preserved them 
from all foreign contacts. It is conceivable that the 
Semang and the Philippine Negritos at one time spoke 
dialects akin to those which the Andamanese have pre- 
served. 

Negrito Life. The culture of the Negritos seems to 
lack all specific traits. It is extremely meager, and they 
seem to possess no tool or custom which is not known 
also to their Filipino neighbors and which they could not 
have derived from them. They live an unsettled exist- 
ence, supporting themselves largely, and in some dis- 
tricts wholly, by hunting and gathering wild foods, 
especially roots, tubers, and honey. Externally, their 
mode of life is thus quite different from that of the 
brown Filipino ; but as soon as their poor little stock of 
civilization is analyzed, it becomes revealed as only a 
pale and abbreviated copy of the latter. In addition, 
the Negrito, with all his shyness, is wont to trade more 
or less with his neighbors, exchanging forest products 
such as rattan and beeswax for cloth, knives, iron, 
and ornaments. The most useful of his possessions are 
therefore not even of his own manufacture. All this 



38 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

renders it justifiable to consider Negrito culture as it 
survives today as in no sense representative of a very 
old and primitive culture, but as being essentially para- 
sitic. 

The relation of the black and brown men in the Philip- 
pines is well illustrated by a passage written by Father 
Domingo Perez in 1680. Speaking of the customs of 
the Sambal, a Malaysian people now Christians, he 
describes how murders were compounded by payments. 
If the slayer had nothing "with which to redeem the 
murder that he committed, he goes to the mountain 
and deceives some black, or steals him and drags him 
to his rancheria, and delivers him to the relatives 
of the murdered man so that they may slay the said 
black. There is [no] great difficulty in this, for in moun- 
tains there they have many acquaintances among the 
blacks. Those blacks are not without their enemies in 
some rancherias of the blacks themselves, where they 
go to make the seizure. And since the blacks are very 
revengeful in taking vengeance on their enemies, they 
aid the Zambals to capture them. The Zambal gives 
the black, whose service he has used for that purpose, 
some arrows or machetes." 

The house which is most frequently encountered 
among the Negrito is a rude lean-to of banana leaves 
fastened to a frame that rests on a pole laid on two 
forked sticks some four or five feet high. This is little 
more than a windbreak made to overhang sufficiently 
to shed the rain. Four or five people can get some pro- 
tection from the weather underneath. A little structure 
of this kind is of course put up in a few minutes, and 
agrees well with the necessities of a more or less wander- 
ing life. In other parts, the Negritos build houses of the 
usual Filipino type, namely, structures with a thatched 
roof and a floor raised above the ground on posts. 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 



39 



although these buildings are usually smaller and more 
poorly made than among the Filipinos. A Chinese 
account of the thirteenth century quite unmistakably 
tells of the Negrito living in nests high in the branches 
of trees. The tree house is however of universal distri- 
bution among the wilder tribes of the Philippines, so 
that again there is nothing distinctive of the Negrito 
in this practice. 

In a number of localities, the Negrito has taken to 
farming, though never on an intensive scale and usually 
with little care for the growth of rice, the food crop 
which is universally most esteemed in the Philippines 

and requires the 
most attention and 
skill to succeed with. 
His person he de- 
corates in some cases 
by sharpening his 
teeth to points. This 
is also a widespread 
Filipino practice. 
As the tattooing 
which the brown- 
skinned Filipino uses 
for ornament would 
not show on his 
dark skin, he deco- 
rates himself by 
scarifying his trunk 
or limbs so as to produce a series of welts. Girdles, neck- 
laces, and neckbands of braided rattan, boar bristles, 
and the like, are frequently worn; but clothing is 
scarcely a factor wherever the Negrito is left to sole 
intercourse with his own kind. Sometimes he wears a 
clout. The women cover themselves with a little skirt 




Fig. 3. Leg Ornament of Boar's Bristles. 
Negrito of Zambales 



40 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

of beaten bark fiber, when they cannot obtain cloth in 
trade. 

The bow has sometimes been spoken of as the most 
prized possession of the Negrito and the weapon which 
is distinctive of him. This is only relatively true. The 
bow was in common use throughout the Philippines at 
the time of discovery, as the Spanish conquerors testi- 
fied from many wounds received. It has more and more 
gone out of use, but is still known in Luzon as well as 
Mindanao. It is true that the Negrito employs the 
weapon more than any Filipino people, but this is prob- 
ably only the result of his being in the same condition 
in which they lived centuries ago when they could ob- 
tain but little iron for other weapons. 

The Batak of Palawan are skilful in the use of a blow- 
gun with poisoned darts, but this instrument is also 
known to a number of non-Negrito groups in the Philip- 
pines. 

Baskets are made in much the same style and patterns 
as by the Filipinos, but pottery is rarely or never manu- 
factured. It would be of little service to a people of 
such unsteady habits and flimsy habitations. Food is 
cooked either directly on the coals or in joints of bamboo 
whenever iron or earthenware vessels are not obtained 
in trade. 

The musical instruments of the Negrito are more 
developed than might be expected from a people leading 
so rude a life. At least some of them are imitations of 
Filipino instruments. There is a simple flute, a little 
Jew's harp of a sliver of slit bamboo, occasionally a 
traded bronze gong, a guitar, and even a rude violin of 
bamboo. 

Negrito society and religion are very little known, but 
the available data again present the phenomenon of a 
simplified replica of Filipino institutions. For instance. 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 



41 



marriage is by purchase of the bride, often by betrothal 
in youth; there is a marriage feast, the central act of the 
wedding being a ceremony of the bride and groom feed- 
ing each other. Slavery is known and may occasionally 



Fig. 4. Fig. 5. 

Fig. 4. Jew's Harp and Comb worn as Hair Ornament. Negrito. 
Fig. 5. Guitar of Bamboo, with Strings Slit Loose. Negrito. 

be practised. This is evident from the Zambales 
Negrito having a word denoting the condition, alipun. 
On religion even less can be said, except that its practice 
and that of medicine seem to be in the hands of such 



42 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

individuals, perhaps in the main old women, as have 
the power of becoming possessed by spirits. 

Brown Peoples. Apart from the Negritos all the 
peoples of the Philippines seem at first sight to be re- 
markably similar in their bodily type. They are a 
brown-skinned, straight-haired race with scant beards 
and smooth skins, somewhat under the average of 
human height, and with distinctly slender and graceful 
frames moulded about delicate bones, presenting 
nothing at all suggestive of Negroid traits and about as 
little of anything Caucasian. They have usually been 
reckoned, together with the other inhabitants of the 
East Indies, as a branch of the third great division of 
mankind, the yellow or Mongoloid race. This does not 
mean that they are to be identified with the people 
whom we are unconsciously wont to recognize as most 
representative of the Mongoloids, namely, the Chinese. 
The Chinese are Mongolians in the narrow sense, as 
contrasted with the Mongoloids who embrace all the 
nations of Eastern Asia and aboriginal America and 
many of those of Oceania. In fact, there can be little 
doubt that the Chinese are a particular specialization of 
the generalized Mongoloid stem, as indeed might be 
expected from a people so great and so long civilized. 
Thus, the slant or Mongolian eye is characteristic of 
them and some of their nearer neighbors; but the 
absence of this particular feature among most of the 
American Indians and Oceanic peoples, is no bar to the 
classification of these people as Mongoloids on a basis 
of more numerous other traits. 

Indonesians and Malayans. Closer examina- 
tion, however, reveals that two varieties of the Oceanic 
Mongoloid subrace prevail in many parts of the East 
Indies. This is true in Java, in Borneo, and elsewhere, 
including the Philippines. The more numerous type, 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIE POPULATION 



43 




Fig. (3. Bagobo Man with Bead-Embroidered Jacket. The ear is perforated for 
an ornamental plug. 

which we may name the Malayan proper, answers the 
description already given. It need only be added that 
this type is round-headed and has a nose of medium 
breadth. 




Fig. 7. Bisaya Girl: Malayan Type. 



44 




Fig. 8. Tagalog: Malayan Type. 



45 



46 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



The less numerous or Indonesian type differs in several 
respects. It averages several centimeters less in bodily 
height. The head is perceptibly narrower, the nose very 
much broader. The figure is stockier, the legs are short 
and sturdy, and there is a general lack of the racial 
refinement that distinguishes the bodily contours of the 
proper Malayan. 





Fig. 9. Fig. 10. 

Figs. 9, 10. Indonesians: Nabaloi Woman; Bontok Man equipped for War. 

In other features there is not yet known to be any 
difference between the two types, but those enumerated 
suffice to establish them as separate, although there is 
every indication that they are rather closely related. 

In the Philippines, nine-tenths or more of the popula- 
tion are of the Malayan type. This comprises practically 
all of the Christian tribes, certainly the majority of the 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 47 

Mohammedans, and at least some of the pagans, such 
as the Subanun of Mindanao. The Indonesian type 
occurs chiefly among the pagans, and has been definitely 
proved only for the interior of northern Luzon and the 
interior of Mindanao, although smaller bodies of people 
on other islands may yet be found to belong to this type 
when measurements of them shall have been made. 
This Indonesian type is most pronounced among the 
Luzon group. In Mindanao it is somewhat more vari- 
able. It is probable that in this island there has been 
some blending of the Malayan and Indonesian varieties, 
since some of the Mohammedan coast tribes depart 
from the pure Malaysian type as it is found among the 
Christians, whereas certain of the pagans tend to re- 
semble the Malayans. 

The following figures characterize a number of tribes 
of the two types. 



A. Mongoloid Race — Malayan Variety 

Stature Head Form Shape of Nose 
Christian Peoples: 

Cagayan 164 81 81 



Ilokano 160 85 

Pangasinan 163 84 



73 
73 

Sambal 161 83 80 

Pampanga 162 81 76 

Tagalog of Bulacan 160 85 82 



Tagalog of Rizal 158 81 

Tagalog of Laguna 160 83 



80 

82 

Tagalog of Cavite 159 83 78 



Bikol 158 82 gi 

Bisaya of Panay 159 83 84 

Bisaya of Negros 160 85 81 

Bisaya of Cebu 160 84 80 

Bisaya of Leyte 158 85 79 

Bisaya of Samar 156 85 82 



48 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



Stature Head Form Shape of Nose 



Mohammedan Peoples: 












Moro of Davao 




157 




82 


85 


Moro of Cotabato 




160 




81 


82 


Moro of Zamboanga 




161 




81 


81 


Moro of Sulu 




160 




83 


83 


Pagan Peoples: 












Subanun of Mindanao 




161 




83 


75 


Tagakaolo of Mindanao 




159 




81 


85 


B. Mongoloid Race 


— Indonesian Variety 


Pagan Peoples: 












Bontok of Luzon 




155 




78 


100 


Kankanai of Luzon 




151 




82. 


89 


Nabaloi of Luzon 




154 




80 


95 


Ifugao of Luzon 




155 




77 


102 


Ilongot of Luzon 




156 




82 


89 


Manobo of Mindanao 




152 




82 


93 


Bilaan of Mindanao 




155 




80 


(90) 


Tagbanua of Palawan 




155 




81 


93 


C 


. Negrito 








Aeta of Zambales 




146 




82 


106 


Aeta of Bataan 




148 




85 


95 


Batak of Palawan 




150 




81 


97 


Mamanua of Mindanao 




[159] 




84 


103 




Summary 








Range of above groups: 












Malayan 


157 


-164 


80 


-85 


73-85 


Indonesian 


151 


-156 


77 


-82 


89-102 


Negrito 


146 


-150 


81 


-85 


95-106 



The origin of these two varieties of the same race of 
man side by side within the Philippines is best explained 
by the assumption of two separate waves or periods of 
immigration, the Indonesians arriving first and depriv- 
ing the aboriginal Negritos of most of their territory, 
at least in the coast and lowland districts, but being 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 49 

in turn crowded back into the hills when the later 
Malayans arrived. The Malayans may or. may not 
have come in superior numbers. It is not necessary to 
assume that they did. Arriving with a higher civiliza- 
tion perhaps already embodying many cultural elements 
derived from India, and possessing,, a more compact 
organization and superior weapons, they would easily 
have been able to establish themselves even without a 
preponderance of numbers. Occupying the most 
fertile tracts, they would tend to increase more rapidly. 
The Spanish occupation must also have tended strongly 
to accentuate the disproportion of numbers; since the 
inlanders were left almost wholly to their interminable 
blood feuds, whereas the pacified and economically 
advantaged Malayan tribes would multiply at a faster 
rate. 

That something of this sort has occurred in the Philip- 
pines is probable not only on internal evidence, but 
because quite analogous conditions prevail over the 
whole of the western half of the East Indies. In Borneo, 
Java, Sumatra, and to a certain degree in the Malay 
Peninsula, the same two types are found associated, 
usually in the same relation: the longer-headed and 
broader-nosed Indonesians mainly in the interior, the 
Malayans proper along the coasts. If the two types 
were distinct only in the Philippines, it might be 
imagined that they were nothing but local modifications 
of a single race that had reached the archipelago in one 
movement, but had become diversified through the 
respective influences of mountain and lowland habitat, 
with the attendant differences in mode of life. The 
occurrence of both types in so many other islands, how- 
ever, makes this explanation much less plausible than 
the one which assumes the successive diffusion of two 
separate types over the entire region. 



50 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

It has been suggested that the Indonesian may be 
nothing but a blend of Negrito and Malayan, The 
shorter stature of the Indonesian and his very broad 
nose might at first seem to support such a view. On 
the other hand, the Indonesian is a distinctly straight- 
haired race, whereas Negrito and negroid blood, wher- 
ever it can possibly be traced, always renders the hair 
at least wavy, if not curly. Furthermore, both the 
Malayan and the Negrito happen to coincide in being 
round-headed, whereas the head form of the Indonesian 
is distinctly longer. It is hardly possible to believe 
that two round-headed races should produce a long- 
headed blend. 

The distinctness of the Malayan and Indonesian 
types may therefore be accepted. The Malayan is 
certainly wholly Mongoloid; in many respects, his 
type stands very close to that which prevails in the more 
civilized portions of Indo-China, as in Siam. The 
oblique Mongoloid eye is sometimes marked in Java, 
and occurs occasionally among the Malayan strata in 
the Philippines. Inasmuch as only some five percent 
of the Christian Filipinos are computed to contain a 
strain of Chinese blood derived from Chinese im- 
migrants, and since in certain districts some approach 
to the slant eye seems to be displayed in a considerably 
larger proportion of the population, it is probable that 
this feature must be recognized as due to a tendency 
of some strength, though by no means a universal one, 
inhering in the Malayan variety. 

The Indonesians are less distinctively Mongoloid. 
The slant eye is at least very rare among them, perhaps 
wholly absent. Their broad noses are also scarcely 
paralleled among other Mongoloids. It has been sug- 
gested that they are Caucasian, or of Caucasian affini- 
ties; but if this is so, the affinity must be very remote. 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 51 

Their lanky hair is alone sufficient to throw strong 
doubts on any such theory. Furthermore, their broad 
noses are even more un-Caucasian than un-Mongoloid; 
for, whereas the Mongoloid in general is medium-nosed, 
the Caucasian is distinctively narrow-nosed. There is 
also nothing specifically Negroid in the Indonesian, 
since his nose in spite of its breadth lacks the character- 
istic flat shape of the Negro organ. A connection with 
an Australian type has been thought of; but here also 
there is little if anything positive in favor of such a 
view. 

On the whole then, the status of the Indonesian sub- 
race or variety is best summed up by its recognition as 
a Mongoloid type presenting fewer specific Mongoloid 
features than the Malayan type. On the hypothesis 
that the Indonesian was the earlier and the Malayan 
the later comer of the two sets of brown peoples, this 
relation is very much what might be expected. 

As to the regions in which these two types originated 
and took their present form, and the period at which 
they began to swarm out from these ancestral homes, 
nothing is known. Even conjecture would be idle 
except for the supposition, which follows rather ob- 
viously from their general geographic position, that they 
are both likely to have had their source in southeastern 
Asia. 

The Principal Nationalities: Christian. The 
local diversity of the Filipinos among themselves is 
rather remarkable, and argues that the past history of 
most groups has consisted of a long-continued occupation 
of the same region under conditions of limited intercourse 
with the outside world, broken now and then by spas- 
modic movements. More than thirty nationalities 
must be distinguished in the islands, in addition to the 
scattered bands of Negritos and more or less Negritoid 



52 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Hill people. All of these differed in speech; invariably 
they also differed more or less in customs. Most of the 
distinctions of custom are striking rather than deep- 
seated; but the divergence between the Christian, 
Mohammedan, and pagan tribes is profound. This 
classification, therefore, offers the best approach for a 
review of the peoples of the Philippines. (Map 6.) 

The Tagalog of central Luzon are the best-known and 
most advanced nation among the Christians; in fact, 
of all the peoples of the islands. Numbering somewhat 
short of two millions, they are only the second largest 
nationality. But the location of the capital city, 
Manila, in their territory, and their general proximity 
to this center of government and civilization, have 
thrown in their way many advantages which have 
reached the other nationalities in more diluted form. 
Not only is education among the mass of people prob- 
ably most advanced among the Tagalog, but they 
possess the most abundant native literature, and their 
language is accepted as the most elaborate and polished. 

The largest nationality are the Bisaya of the Bisayan 
or central islands. They were the people first dis- 
covered in the Philippines, Magellan landing and 
meeting his death among them in 1521. The first 
Spanish attempts at subjugation were also directed 
against them. They number four millions or more than 
two-fifths of the total population. The Spaniards of the 
early period knew them as Pintados or '^ painted 
people," owing to their fondness for tattooing the body. 
Their numbers have grown very rapidly and they 
are showing an increasing inclination to spread out from 
their native islands to the coasts of Mindanao and 
Palawan. While slightly less advanced in civilization, 
on the whole, than the Tagalog, their superior numbers 
put them in a position which leaves the probable ulti- 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 53 

mate predominance among the many nationalities of 
the islands between these two. 

Situated between the Tagalog and the Bisaya, and 
on the whole affiliated more closely with the latter, 
although situated in southern Luzon, are the Bikol, 
also a considerable people, numbering about two-thirds 
of a million. 

To the north of the Tagalog, the first Christian nation 
encountered are the Pampanga in the fertile lowlands of 
the river and province of this name. They became 
ready converts to Christianity and Spanish rule, and 
the early records abound with praises of the bravery 
and fidelity for which they were distinguished among 
the native soldiers in the service of the King of Spain. 

Beyond, in the Province of Zambales, are the Sambal, 
somewhat off the main tracks of communication, and 
subjugated considerably later than the other Christian 
peoples. As might be expected, they therefore lag 
somewhat behind in their general advancement. They 
are also much the smallest of the recognized Christian 
nationalities. 

Farther north are the Pangasinan, also in the prov- 
ince of the same name. The Spaniards had trouble 
with them at first, but they have long since joined the 
other converts and are now prosperous in their rich 
bottomlands. 

Along the narrow strip of coast known as North and 
South Ylocos are the Ilokano, a million strong, and the 
third greatest people in the islands. The Ylocos coast 
was rather heavily populated at the time of discovery, 
and has long since proved insufficient to hold the entire 
mass of this people. They have spread southward and 
eastward along the coast, and up and down the larger 
river valleys, encroaching upon the Sambal, Pangasinan, 
and Cagayan, often assimilating them and threatening 



54 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

ultimately to extinguish them. They are easily the 
most restless and inclined to move of all Philippine 
peoples. These habits are very likely left over from the 
period when their numbers were over-concentrated in 
a small area. They and the Pangasinan approach most 
closely of all Filipinos to the specifically Mongolian 
type of body. This may seem a very natural condition 
in view of their being geographically nearest to China, 
but the proportion of Chinese now settled in the Ilokano 
and Pangasinan districts is unusually small, and there 
appear to be fewer historical records of the Chinese 
establishing themselves on these coasts than in the 
vicinity of Manila and several other parts of the islands. 

The home of the people usually called Cagayan, 
although their language is known as Ibanag, is the 
valley of the Cagayan, the greatest river in Luzon and 
the archipelago. They have yielded certain parts of their 
territory to the Ilokano. With them there must be 
included, on a broader view, the Christianized portion 
of a people whose pagan members are still reckoned 
as distinct, the Gaddang of the higher courses of the 
Cagayan. 

The Batanes, the inhabitants of the islands of the 
same name, halfway between Luzon and Formosa, 
speak a language of their own whose affiliations have 
sometimes been placed with the Ilokano and sometimes 
with Cagayan. They perhaps represent a specialized 
offshoot of ancient Ilokano stock. 

The Isinai have maintained themselves only in three 
towns in Nueva Vizcaya. While a separate people, 
they may also be reckoned as members of the Ilokano 
group. The same, it may be remarked, can be said of 
most of the pagan mountaineers of Luzon ; at least, so 
far as their speech goes. 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 55 

In a broader view, the foregoing nationalities are 
remarkably alike. There are towns, roads, and per- 
manently cultivated fields in their territories, settled 
administration, schools, and devout adherence to 
Catholicism. Slavery has long gone out of use in form, 
but peonage, its economic substitute, prevails in many 
districts. The poor become the debtors and dependents 
of the rich man. The men wear trousers and shirts; 
the women gowns of cotton, or where they can afford 
the expense, of beautiful textiles woven of pineapple 
fiber with or without silk. The amusements are church 
festivals, cock fighting, and gambling. 

Much the greater part of the regions now Christian 
was subdued by the Spaniards within a few years. 
The land and natives were parcelled out into encomien- 
das, some of which went to the king or the church, but 
the majority to soldiers in the subjugating army. These 
men practically became feudal barons to whom the 
natives of their district paid tribute. A list of encomien- 
das and tributes made out in 1591, only twenty-five 
years after the Spaniards began their conquest, shows a 
large number of settlements which have persisted under 
the same name to the present time. The population 
was much smaller than now ; but the nationalities were 
distributed substantially as at present, and with their 
relative strength approximating more closely to modern 
conditions than might be expected. 





1591 


1916 


Bisaya 


168,000 


3,977,000 


Tagalog 


124,000 


1,789,000 


Ilokano 


75,000 


989,000 


Bikol 


77,000 


685,000 


Pangasinan (only partly reduced) 


24,000 


381,000 


Pampanga 


75,000 


337,000 



Cagayan (perhaps overestimated, and including 

Gaddang, etc.) . 96,000 156,000 



56 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Mohammedan Peoples. The Mohammedan 
peoples have been conspicuous in PhiUppine history 
for their propensity to war and piracy, and the fact that 
they maintained their independence unbroken until 
near the end of the period of Spanish occupancy. Even 
then they were only half subdued, and were largely 
left by the Spaniards to their own devices. But in 
numbers they have always been weaker than the 
Christians. Today there are but little over three 
hundred thousand Mohammedans in the archipelago 
as against more than eight million Christians. In fact, 
the Mohammedans are outnumbered more than two to 
one by the pagans. They have remained almost wholly 
restricted to southern Mindanao and the Sulu chain of 
islands. The Spaniards appHed to them the name 
Moros, ''Moors," which, of course, meant nothing but 
Mohammedans. The designation has however stuck, 
and inasmuch as Mohammedan tribes are all very 
similar in customs and in their attitude toward the 
foreigner, it remains a very convenient group name. 

It is true that the Moro are not wholly uniform, 
especially on the side of language; but the differences 
between them have not been primarily ethnic, as in the 
remainder of the Philippines, but pohtical. The Mo- 
hammedan introduced, along with his religion, the idea 
of the sultanate or kingship, and the native who em- 
braced Islam soon came to think of himself as a follower 
of such and such a lord or over-lord, with his residence 
in this or that little capital, rather than as a member of 
one or another nationality. The fluctuating fortunes 
of the sultanates rested very largely on the personal 
character and abilities of the temporary occupant of the 
throne. The most important states were those of Sulu 
and of Cotabato or Magindanao. The latter was 
situated at the mouth of the great Magindanao River 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 57 

from which the island of Mindanao is named, and up 
which the Mohammedan faith penetrated a considerable 
distance. Another center of Moro settlement was in 
the district of Lake Lanao in the narrow middle region 
of Mindanao. 

One Mohammedan people must be specially men- 
tioned, the Samal, often known as the sea gypsies, from 
their wandering maritime habits. Tradition brings 
them from Johore in the Malay Peninsula. Whether 
or not this is authentic, numbers of the same or a similar 
people frequent the shores of various of the East Indies. 
They live either on the immediate shore or outright 
on their boats, and do not practise agriculture, but 
derive their living from fishing, trade, or piracy. Those 
settled on the coast are distinguished as the Samal 
proper or ''companions," the dwellers in boats are the 
Bajao or Samal Laut, the ''sea people." Both groups 
generally acknowledged the suzerainty of the sultan of 
Sulu and furnished the mainstays of the crews on his 
expeditions. They are an extremely interesting people 
of whose inner mode of life very little is known. 

Pagan Tribes. The modern pagans of the Philip- 
pines fall into two large bodies and a few comparatively 
insignificant ones. One great mass occupies the moun- 
tainous interior of northern Luzon; the other, the larger 
part of the heavily forested interior of Mindanao. 
Both regions are hinterlands which Christianity as well 
as Mohammedanism long failed to penetrate. In fact, 
parts of both regions rest unexplored to the present 
day. The Spaniards made but half-hearted and gradual 
efforts to establish themselves among these heathen, 
although the priest often preceded the captain and the 
governor. Several of the pagan tribes remained prac- 
tically unknown until after the American occupation. 



58 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

These two groups of pagans, who aggregate about 
two-thirds of a milhon or twice as much as the number of 
American Indians surviving in the United States, are of 
the greatest interest in that they undoubtedly reveal 
to us the appoximate condition in which all the Filipinos 
lived at the time of discovery. The resemblance of their 
society, arts, and religion, in spite of the separation of 
the two masses by many hundreds of miles of sea and 
land, is really very great. There can thus be no doubt 
that the intervening peoples, such as the Bisaya and 
Tagalog, must have shared in this community of cul- 
ture. A study of the Bontok or Bagobo therefore 
illuminates at innumerable points the rather cursory 
records which the early Spaniards left concerning the 
peoples now Christianized. 

There is however one difference observable between 
the pagans of Luzon and those of Mindanao. This is the 
kind and degree of their exposure to foreign influences 
in the pre-Spanish period. The inland districts of 
Mindanao seem to have absorbed considerably more 
from Hindu civilization than those of Luzon. It can- 
not be affirmed outright but this was due to the greater 
proximity of Mindanao to Borneo, and through it to 
Java and other western centers of early culture; for 
the Tagalog language, whose home is in Luzon, contains 
a larger proportion of Sanskrit words than any other. 
At some time or other, Hindu influences must therefore 
have reached Luzon as well as Mindanao and without 
first traversing the latter island. This being so, there 
seems no reason why the pagans of Luzon should not 
have absorbed as much of this higher civilization as the 
mountaineers of Mindanao. They were indeed un- 
questionably affected in some measure; but why they 
did not succumb more completely, is an unexplained 
fact. The reason may possibly be sought in topography. 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 59 

The interior of Luzon is exceedingly rugged, whereas 
Mindanao, is traversed by only one large mountain 
chain and contains two great river systems. 

Then, at a later period, but still before the arrival of 
Europeans, came the Mohammedan advent. This 
proceeded from Borneo or followed its coasts and 
launched itself upon the Sulu Islands and western and 
southern Mindanao. It had only just begun to reach 
some outposts in Luzon when the Spaniards put an end 
to the propaganda. The wild tribes of Mindanao 
however continued to receive many articles in trade 
from the Moros, and even those who remained 
thoroughly pagan adopted something of their skill in 
working steel and brass, and their weapons and clothing. 
Of the two regions, then, Luzon is somewhat more 
representative of the rude civilization that prevailed 
over the Philippines a thousand or two thousand years 
ago. 

Pagans of Luzon. The most northerly pagan 
group in Luzon are the Apayao, who are perhaps the 
least known of any. They are situated between the 
Ilokano and Cagayan; in speech and therefore origin 
they are said to incline more to the latter. 

To the south of them, on the westward slopes toward 
the China Sea, are the Tinggian, who may be considered 
as little more than un-Christianized Ilokano. They 
have however received from the latter people elements of 
civilization, especially of a material kind, which put 
them somewhat in advance of most of the other pagans. 
They are a scrupulously cleanly people. 

To the south of the Tinggian live three groups of 
people, the Bontok, Kankanai, and Nabaloi, who are 
often spoken of collectively as Igorot. The latter term 
has been used with a great variety of meanings. Some 
authorities, including the American census of 1903, 



60 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



make ''Igorot" embrace all the pagans of northern 
Luzon, except the Negritos; others restrict it to the 
three tribes mentioned; whereas still others include 




Map 4. PAGANS OF NORTHERN LUZON. 
Brown peoples in shading and named; Negritos in black; Christians in white. 

only the Kankanai and Nabaloi. The term is therefore 
best avoided whenever possible. There is the more 
justification for such avoidance since the name means 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 61 

nothing more than "Mountain People." The Bontok 
are named after one of their towns which happened to 
be chosen as the seat of government for the district. 
Head-hunting was in full swing at the time of the arrival 
of the Americans; but like all the other pagans, the 
Bontok accepted American rule kindly and almost 
cheerfully. While often irked by the enforcement of the 
law against feuds and head-taking, they appreciate the 
advantages of security, and seem to resent American 
authority much less than the attempts at Spanish rule 
and the exactions of the Christianized Filipino. The 
Bontok are to date the best-known pagan people of 
Luzon, and appear to have developed certain pecu- 
liarities such as the institution of the ato, a local 
division or ward within the town. To the south of the 
Bontok are the Kankanai with a large territory, and 
beyond them, the Nabaloi, often known as the Benguet 
Igorot. Spanish influence became rather strong among 
these people toward the end of the nineteenth century, 
but they have succeeded in maintaining many of their 
old habits and nearly all of their religion. Of the three 
groups, the Bontok are the most, and the Nabaloi the 
least numerous; taken together, they aggregate well 
over a hundred thousand people. 

Eastward of the last are the Ifugao — the word means 
merely ''people" — a group living packed together in the 
subprovince of the same name, to the estimated 
number of 132,000. The system of growing irrigated 
rice on terraces built up the mountain sides and watered 
by ditches heading in the river miles above — a system 
followed by most of the pagans of Luzon — reaches its 
greatest development among the Ifugao, some of their 
engineering works being truly astounding. The terraces 
are sometimes forty feet in height and less than that in 
breadth, so that the labor involved in the construction 



62 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

of a small field is enormous. Like most of their neigh- 
bors, the Ifugao are exceedingly industrious, working 
at their agriculture with an assiduity in which the 
Christian Filipino rarely attempts to share. They are 
broken up into innumerable' small groups which were 
constantly in feud with each other. But with all the 
unsettlement of daily life they have worked out an 
elaborate and interesting system of law. 

North of Bontok and Ifugao lives a miscellaneous 
assemblage of tribes usually thrown together under the 
group name Kalinga, which means nothing more than 
"enemy." They are about half as numerous as the 
Ifugao, and the second largest pagan group in the 
islands. The Kalinga are exceedingly heterogeneous. 
Their customs differ markedly from locality to locality, 
and their idioms appear to vary no less. It seems that 
at least five principal groups of Kalinga can be recog- 
nized. An attempt to indicate these subdivisions has 
been made on the map. The original affiliations of the 
Kalinga as a whole seem to have been with the Cagayan, 
as might be expected from their residence on streams 
which drain directly into the Cagayan River. South- 
eastward from them are the remnants of the wild Gad- 
dang. It is possible that when fuller information be- 
comes available these should be included as a Kalinga 
division. 

One other pagan group remains in Luzon, the Ilongot 
of the extreme headwaters of the Cagayan, where they 
border on the Ilokano and the Tagalog of the province 
of Nueva Ecija. They are separated from all the 
preceding wild tribes by tracts that are either unin- 
habited or settled by Christians. The territory of the 
Ilongot is excessively rugged and has been only partially 
explored. They live in much scattered small units and 
their numbers are very limited, probably not exceeding 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 63 

six thousand. As might be expected under these condi- 
tions, they are ruder in their habits than almost all the 
other heathens. 

Pagans of Mindanao. In Mindanao the pagan 
people are cut into two masses by the intrusive Moros 
of Lake Lanao. The smaller western section is inhabited 
by the Subanun or "River People/' some thirty thou- 
sand in number. East of Lake Lanao, in fact stretching 
down to the narrow strip of eastern coast colonized by 
the Bisaya, are two large groups, the Bukidnon, esti- 
mated to number nearly fifty thousand, and the Manobo 
in the valley of the Agusan, about forty thousand 
strong. On the headwaters of the Agusan lives a small 
and almost unknown tribe, the Manguangan. South 
of them, on the peninsula east of the Gulf of Davao, 
are a better-known group, the Mandaya. North and 
west of the Gulf in the interior are the Ata, and nearer 
the coast, the Bagobo. The latter are the Mindanao 
tribe on whom there is fullest information. To the 
south, in the Sarangani Peninsula, there live three 
tribes, the Bilaan, highest in the mountains; next, the 
Tagakaolo; and below them, the Kulaman; while 
Moros are settled on the immediate coast. On the map, 
these groups create a striking impression of a stratifica- 
tion of population. It is possible that when the distribu- 
tion of these four nationalities has been worked out more 
in detail, it will prove to be less regular in its arrange- 
ment of concentric bands. It is doubtful how far the 
position of these people represents actual successive 
immigrations, or on the other hand a mere infiltration 
of alien customs from the seaboard. 

Somewhat to the west of the last groups, and sepa- 
rated from them by Moros or by uninhabited tracts, 
are the Tirurai. Their affiliations seem to be with the 
eastern tribes rather than with the Subanun. Like 



64 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

most of the uncivilized peoples of southern Mindanao, 
they are not very numerous. 

Pagans of Other Islands. There remain pagans 
of considerable interest on two other islands : the Tag- 
banua or ''people of the country" in Palawan, and the 
Mangyan or "savages" in Mindoro. Both are exceed- 
ingly interesting backward peoples who have yielded 
most of the shores of their islands to intrusive Moros, 
Bisaya, and Tagalog, but have retained a culture which 
on the whole is perhaps simpler than that which pre- 
vailed among most of the natives four hundred years 
ago. Their dress is scant, agriculture and the iron 
industry little developed, and the population very sparse 
over the considerable areas involved. . It is very re- 
markable that with such a general low culture both the 
Tagbanua and Mangyan should have succeeded in 
preserving forms of the old native alphabet of Hindu 
origin which once prevailed through the greater part of 
the islands but has everywhere else yielded to the 
Roman or Arabic system of writing. The writing is 
done by incising bamboo, but a difference in the direc- 
tion of the script used by the Tagbanua and Mangyan 
indicates that the two tribes preserved their alphabets 
independently of each other. 

In addition to the groups here enumerated are the 
several bodies of Negritos and of the more or less Negri- 
toid Hill people who are practically unknown, and some 
of whom, such as those of Samar and perhaps Panay, 
may prove to be nearly pure Malaysians : in which case 
they would be placed among the groups here discussed. 

It is notable that both the Hill people and the 
Negritos, in spite of their exceeding backwardness, 
often live very close to well civilized peoples, so far as 
distance in miles goes. The gap which separates them 
from civilization is therefore one of habits and habitat, 



THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 65 

rather than of absolute distance. Twenty-five or thirty 
miles out of Manila or Iloilo suffices to bring one into 
the territory of such bush people. A few miles out of 
the clearings and one stands in a mountain jungle rarely 
frequented by any human soul other than those retiring 
and elusive savages who are forever conscious of the 
difference between themselves and civilized men and 
unwilling to bridge the gap by more than occasional 
communications. 



Chapter II 
SPEECH 

EACH of the many Philippine tribes or nationahties 
talks a language of its own, and some have their 
proper speech divided into several dialects. But 
all these tongues without exception go back to a common 
root form. This basis of Philippine speech recurs in 
Malay, as well as in the numerous languages of Celebes, 
Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and the smaller islands. The 
same fundamental tongue spread, at some remote 
time, northward to Formosa, and even across the vast 
breadth of the Indian Ocean to Madagascar off the 
shores of Africa. 

Popularly, this generic East Indian speech, or rather 
language basis, is known as Malay, but in reality 
Malay is only one of some hundreds of local forms into 
which it has gradually diversified. At no great interval 
before the Portuguese discovery, the Malay proper, with 
his home on the Asiatic peninsula now named after him, 
had become converted to Islam, taking over with the 
new religion a superior political capacity and a restless, 
propagandizing spirit. These qualities carried him, as 
conqueror, pirate, trader, or settler, to the shores of 
many of the East Indian islands — Mindanao is an 
example — in which until then the kindred natives had 
lived with much less contact with the outside world. 
The Malay dialect thus became associated with the 
spread of Mohammedanism, and established as the 
language of commerce and diplomacy. This dominance 
led to its name being applied to the entire mass of 
languages of which it was only one member, although in 
certain respects the most conspicuous. On the side of 
literary achievement, Javanese, especially in its ancient 
Sanskrit-impregnated form known as Kawi, has a much 

67 



68 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

more illustrious history. The position of Malay 
proper in its group may be compared to that of Attic 
Greek, which was also a late form as against the mass of 
Hellenic dialects, but became important through the 
political, commercial, and intellectual dominance of 
Athens. The relation of Latin to the ancient Italic 
tongues is another parallel . 

But Malay has not yet replaced and perhaps never 
will replace the allied local languages to the same 
extent as Attic and Latin submerged their congeners; 
and a case in point occurs in the Philippines. The 
Moros of Sulu and Magindanao possess traditions, 
written in Arabic characters, that begin with the crea- 
tion but soon pass from the domain of religion and 
fanciful legend to that of genealogy, carrying the thread 
to the present day. These records credit the introduc- 
tion of Islam and the establishment of the local sul- 
tanates to Malays who came from Johore in the Malay 
peninsula to northern Borneo and the southern Philip- 
pines toward the close of the fourteenth century, or less 
than two hundred years before the Spanish conquest. 
This date agrees well with all that is known as to the 
period of Mohammedan spread and Malay expansion^ 
and tallies also with the conditions which the first 
Spaniards found in the Mindanao region. If now these 
Malays, who reached the Philippines only five or six 
centuries ago, had come in numbers, they would un- 
doubtedly have retained their speech and probably 
imposed it on many of the natives, as they did succeed 
in imposing Mohammedanism. As a matter of fact 
however, the language of Sulu, Magindanao, etc., is in 
every case a local Philippine dialect, allied most closely 
to the languages of the pagans of Mindanao, and next 
to Bisayan. A few Malay words have crept into Sulu 
and Magindanao, and a certain proportion of the 



SPEECH 69 

natives of these districts speak Malay in addition to 
their proper dialects, just as many Englishmen, Dutch- 
men, and Chinese in the East Indies have learned it 
because of its widespread utility in commerce. 

In short, the fortunes of the invading Mohammedan 
Malay and Catholic Spaniard in the north and south of 
the Philippines were exactly the same. Each established 
his rule and religion and introduced new political and 
economic conditions. Both failed to establish their own 
speech among the mass of the resident population be- 
cause this population was infinitely more numerous 
than their conquerors. 

There is no satisfactory name for the generic East 
Indian form of speech, or the great group of Malaysian 
languages — the mother tongues of more than fifty 
million human beings — as distinguished from the one 
proper Malay language. Philologists have got into the 
habit of calling the group Indonesian; which would be 
satisfactory if anthropologists did not employ Indo- 
nesian to designate precisely the proto-Malaysian or 
primitive Malaysian racial type which they distinguish 
on many of the islands from the historic Malayans. 
It is the languages of the latter — Malay, Javanese, 
Tagalog, and so forth — that the philologist chiefly has in 
mind when he says Indonesian. This word is therefore 
dangerously ambiguous unless clear specification is 
made in every case whether reference is to race or to 
speech. 

It must be admitted that philologists have not yet 
been able to find a basic distinction in speech cor- 
responding to the racial stratification into the primi- 
tive and later Malaysian types. Both types occur in 
Borneo, but all the tongues of that island are primarily 
Bornean and ultimately Malaysian, without aligning 
in any way as their speakers do into a more and a les 



70 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Mongoloid group. The same is true in the Phihppines. 
The Bontok in Luzon and the Bagobo in Mindanao 
are, physically, proto-Malayan; the Ilokano and the 
Sulu belong to the second racial stratum. Now every- 
thing would be much simpler, and our theories of racial 
and historical development ever so much stronger, if 
Bontok and Bagobo proved to be only variants of one 
primary division of East Indian speech, and Ilokano 
and Sulu common members of another. The reverse 
is actually the case. Bontok and Ilokano affiliate, and 
again Bagobo and Sulu. The speech of the primitive 
and later types on the same island is more closely 
related than the speech of two primitive — or two later — 
groups on different islands. In short, so far as language 
relations are concerned, geographical position and not 
adherence to a particular racial type is clearly the 
determining factor. 

A classification of the Philippine languages among 
themselves reveals at least five larger groups. 

1. Northeastern Luzon: Ibanag (Cagayan), Gad- 
dang, Kalinga, Apayao, Ilongot. 

2. Northwestern Luzon : Ilokano, Pangasinan, Ting- 
gian, Bontok, Kankanai, Nabaloi, Isinai, probably 
Ifugao and Bataan, perhaps Sambal. 

3. North Central Luzon: Pampanga — perhaps a 
diversified offshoot from the next. 

4. Central region : Tagalog, Bikol, Bisaya. 

5. Mindanao. The languages of this island are too 
imperfectly known to allow of their certain placing. 
They show some similarities to Bisaya, but may con- 
stitute a distinct group, or even more than one. 

The position of the languages of Palawan and 
Mindoro, as of Sambal, remains obscure. 



SPEECH 



71 




^ 







Map 5. SOME PHILIPPINE LANGUAGES. 
The four divergent dialect groups of northern Luzon: 1 Cagayan type; 2 Ilo- 
kano type; 3 Pampanga; 4 Sambal (doubtful); and the four principal varieties of 
the Bisaya tongue (distribution in black) ; showing the diversification of speech 
in land areas and its unchanged spread by sea. 



72 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

While some of these idioms, such as Tagalog, are very 
well known, there is no information on others beyond 
brief vocabularies, and in regard to several dialects 
nothing at all has been published. The classification is 
therefore tentative ; but in its main outlines it promises 
to stand. Its most significant feature, well brought 
out by the map, is the tendency toward specialization 
and diversification in the north of the archipelago. 
Three of the five groups of tongues are confined to the 
northern half of the island of Luzon: and as for the 
remaining two, it is not even certain that they are 
distinct. Topography may be responsible. The central 
Cordillera of Luzon, in whose region the Northeastern 
and Northwestern groups adjoin and from which Pam- 
pangan is not far removed, is easily the most intricate 
and irregular mountain system in the Philippines, in 
which trade is restricted and communication painfully 
slow even today. Nature has thus provided unusual 
opportunity for local dialects to spring up and become 
accentuated. 

It is clear in every way that intercourse within the 
archipelago occurred much more readily by sea than by 
land even at an early period. A striking example is 
furnished by the Bisayan dialects, whose areas are 
outlined in Map 5. Different dialects are spoken on 
the two sides of single islands of no great size; whereas 
a single dialect extends across straits or seas to the con- 
fronting shores of other islands. The distribution of 
Tagalog and Bisaya on Mindoro points to the same 
condition. Only Ilokano seems to reflect a different 
story, but this tongue had no other islands opposed to 
its original seat of development, and therefore appears 
to have sidled along the coasts of northern Luzon until 
it could spread no farther, and then to have pushed up 
two or three large open river systems during the last 



SPEECH 73 

century. On the other hand Ilokano has spread com- 
paratively httle into its own immediate hinterland, 
which is mountainous. 

On a wider view, it became apparent to scholars a 
century ago that all the East Indian languages bore 
abundant traces of a common origin with those of the 
Polynesian islands, far out in the Pacific. To this great 
family, denominated by the Malayo-Polynesian, the 
Melanesian and Micronesian tongues of the nearer parts 
of the Pacific were also found to belong. With the ex- 
ception of New Guinea, and Australia somewhat off 
to one side, all the languages of Oceania are therefore 
only varieties of one fundamental stock, the vast sweep 
of which reaches from Hawaii and Easter Island, front- 
ing the coast of America, to Madagascar near South 
Africa, or more than half way around the planet. 

More recently it has been asserted and accepted by 
many students that the Mon-Khmer group of languages 
of Indo-China, the Khasi of Assam, and the Munda of 
India proper, form part of the same great assemblage, 
to whose more inclusive extent the name Austronesian 
has been applied. The area added to the family by the 
addition of Mon-Khmer and Munda is not particularly 
large. The significance of the inclusion lies in the fact 
that it brings the Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian 
stock definitely on to the Asiatic mainland, and so 
suggests possible origins that remained obscure as 
long as the family seemed to be wholly oceanic and 
insular. 

Philippine speech thus is only a minute fragment of a 
widening series of circles: East Indian, Malayo- 
Polynesian, Oceanic, Austronesian. Its ultimate prob- 
lems are problems of these greater groups. Where 
language is common or akin, there must have been com- 
munication, perhaps original unity of the speakers; 



74 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

and with speech, something of culture must have flowed 
from one region to another. It is in these vast and stir- 
ring perspectives that the languages of the Philippines 
find their setting and their illumination. 



Chapter III 
THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 

Agriculture and Domestic Animals. There is 
a widely prevalent theory that mankind as a whole has 
passed through three successive stages with reference 
to its food. According to this view, people were first 
hunters, fishermen, or gatherers of roots and berries; 
after a time they came to domesticate animals and lead 
a pastoral life; in the last state, they are reputed to 
have added the domestication of plants, in other words, 
agriculture. 

This theory rests upon two foundations. The first 
is the observation that all nations of hunters possess a 
comparatively rude civilization — always, at any rate, 
inferior to that of Europeans. The second prop to the 
theory is the knowledge that the Hebrews and certain 
European peoples changed from the pastoral to the 
agricultural life about the beginning of the historical 
period. It will be seen that these two facts are a very 
slender foundation on which to rear a hypothesis appli- 
cable to mankind in general. Indeed, it has long since 
been noted that there are so many contrary cases that 
the theory must be looked upon as untenable. In the 
whole of aboriginal America, for instance, animals 
other than the dog were domesticated in only a few 
place and at best utilized only to a subsidiary extent. 
In a large part of both North and South America, 
however, agriculture was practised, in many regions 
intensively, and there can be no doubt whatever that 
this mode of life was entered directly from the hunting 
and root-gathering stage. 

Domestic animals are kept in most parts of the East 
Indies, but always among people that also till the soil 
and in every case place much more dependence on their 

75 



76 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

crops than on their pigs and fowls. Side by side with 
them live tribes that neither keep animals nor farm but 
are pure hunters. In fact, the breeding of animals is 
so universal an accompaniment of agriculture, and so 
distinctly secondary to it throughout Oceania, that 
there is hardly any conclusion possible but that it was 
developed as a side-product of agriculture and probably 
subsequently to the latter. 

The problem therefore shifts from the general but 
erroneous theory, to the question of how the transition 
from a hunting to a farming life was accomplished in the 
Philippines and East Indies. In the nature of the case, 
such a transition happens much more easily in the fertile 
tropics than in more temperate latitudes. The bread- 
fruit tree, the banana, the coconut palm, to take only a 
few examples, require only the slightest attention to 
make them yield useful food for many years. For other 
crops, such as the sweet potato, which is grown so 
abundantly in the Philippines, the procedure is little 
more difficult. All that plants of this type need to 
produce a bountiful crop is a clearing to give them a 
start, and some protection against the natural growths 
that threaten to choke them out of existence. The many 
difficulties that confronted and must often have dis- 
couraged the incipient agriculturist in more northern 
latitudes are therefore scarcely present in the tropics. 
All that is required to convert even quite uncivilized 
tribes from hunters to farmers is the realization of 
the desirability of greater steadiness of food supply. 
This desirability must become a necessity as soon as the 
population attains density, as has obviously often 
happened on the comparatively small areas of an 
archipelago. 

If then agriculture can be slid into, as it were, by 
even lowly tribes, it is hopeless to look at the present 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 77 

time for a precise knowledge of the very first beginning 
of the art in the Phihppines. Agriculture may have 
been adopted time and again by disconnected peoples 
and under diverse conditions. Where natural conditions 
make the acquisition of a new cultural phase so exceed- 
ingly easy that a slight stimulus suffices, there is every 
probability that this stimulus first occurred in the very 
remote past. 




Fig. 11. Hunting Snare. Mangyan. 

The presence in the Philippines of some bands of 
Negritos that do not farm, does not in any way antago- 
nize this conclusion or seriously complicate the situation. 
Just in proportion as the majority of natives became 
dependent upon agriculture, they would require les& 
territory for their maintenance. That territory would 
also tend to be concentrated in the lowlands, leaving the 
mountains and denser forests of little use or interest to 
them. This condition in turn would leave these wilder 
tracts wholly at the disposal of the less numerous hunt- 
ing peoples, and so enable these to live without being 



78 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

seriously pressed for subsistence. In this way it is 
conceivable that the establishment of agriculture might 
itself incline for a very long time to perpetuate the 
hunting stage in closely adjacent regions. This con- 
clusion is particularly applicable to the Philippines, 
where we know that the bulk of the population has long 
been concentrated on the coast. 

As regards domesticated animals, it is notable that the 
Filipino kept only three besides the dog. These are the 
common fowl, the pig, and the carabao or water buffalo. 
All three of these varieties also occur wild on the islands, 
the chicken as the jungle fowl, the pig probably as a 
variety originally wild, whereas it is doubtful whether 
the buffalo is native or has been introduced by man. 
Cattle and sheep were not known in the Philippines 
until after the arrival of the Europeans. Horses and 
goats are bred by some of the natives of Mindanao, but 
there is every indication that these were introduced by 
the Mohammedans, or at the utmost during the last 
phase of the period of Hindu influence. 

The buffalo is now used both as a draught animal and 
for riding, but there seems to be no record of its being 
kept for any other purpose than food in the pre- 
European period. In fact, wheeled vehicles were un- 
known and roads on which they could have been used 
did not exist. Even today, the more remote pagans of 
Luzon keep their buffaloes only to slaughter them. 

It is also not native practice in the Philippines to 
milk the buffalo or to utilize any dairy products. This 
is a habit characteristic not only of the East Indies, but 
of southeastern Asia. 

Perhaps the most notable thing about the place of 
domesticated animals in primitive Filipino life is the 
fact that animals are never killed other than for a 
sacrifice, and that the flesh of sacrificed animals is always 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 79 

consumed wholly or almost wholly by the worshippers. 
This seems to have been true of all the natives when dis- 
covered, and is still the custom of the uncivilized 
peoples. Since sacrifice is the most important act in 
ceremonial, it is clear that the Filipino thinks of eating 
flesh as essentially an accompaniment of religion , and 
conversely of religion — at least in all its greater and 
more public manifestations — as always ending in a sub- 
stantial meal. 

This devotion, in theory at least, of domestic animals 
to the purposes of religion, is likely to be an importation. 
The idea of animal sacrifice is cardinal in the religion 
of the ancient Greeks, Hebrews, and other nations in the 
region of the eastern Mediterranean. It is not essen- 
tially East Asiatic ; or if ever it was, fell at an extremely 
early period into nearly complete disuse. The more or 
less uncivilized regions in which the life sacrifice still 
prevails, such as large parts of Africa, are so situated 
that the practice might easily have been introduced by 
diffusion from its original Mediterranoid center. There 
seems considerable probability that the sacrifice usages 
were also carried eastward from their earliest hearth, 
presumably through India, and thence to the East 
Indies and the Philippines. It does not of course follow 
necessarily that the breeding of animals was unknown 
before. But its identification with the sacrifice concept 
is so undeniably close today, that there exists the very 
strong possibility that both traits of culture were carried 
into the Philippines as merely two aspects of a single 
set of practices. 

Rice Culture. Rice is the staple food of the Filipino 
of every condition, and the thing that probably occupies 
his life-long attention more than any one other. His 
most regular labor is that which he performs in the 
cultivation of this plant. In place of money, he uses 



80 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

measures of rice, both as standards of value and in 
actual transfers. The greatest article of wealth among 
so thoroughly pagan a people as the Ifugao is the rice 
field. A man that inherits enough of these is thereby 
rich and his position in society established. Rice 
fields are the last of his possessions which an Ifugao 
willingly allows to pass from the tenure of his blood line. 
Every tribe whose religion has not broken down before 
Christianity or Mohammedanism, practices at least one 
important ceremony whose main purpose is the produc- 
tion of rice ; frequently a whole series of such rituals are 
performed for each stage of rice agriculture — the clear- 
ing of the ground, the planting, the cultivation, the 
harvesting, and the preservation of the crop. It is sig- 
nificant that even though other crops are grown, they 
very rarely have special ceremonies devoted to them. 
The native point of view is clearly that if the success of 
the rice is insured by the necessary magical and cere- 
monial means, other crops will automatically take care 
of themselves. When plant food is offered to the spirits 
in any connection, it is almost invariably rice. In short, 
the Filipino not only eats rice, but thinks in terms of 
rice, and if his civilization is to be described in a single 
phrase it can only be named a rice culture. 

Something like a hundred varieties of rice are distin- 
guished by the natives. But from the point of view of 
the student of Filipino life, these fall into two great 
classes; swamp rice, which can be grown only in marshes 
or under irrigation ; and upland or mountain rice, which 
needs no watering beyond that supplied by the rains. 
The distinction between these two types is important 
because of its effect on the habits of the people. Swamp 
rice keeps its cultivators in the lowlands, or forces them 
to construct irrigation works which become elaborate in 
proportion as the country follows rugged contours. 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 



81 



Upland rice has a much smaller yield, but possesses the 
advantage that it can be grown almost anywhere, and 
makes possible adherence to the kaingin system of 
scattered clearings in the forest. 

Terrace Irrigation. Whereas it might be expected 
that the advanced Christian natives would be the ones 
to undertake the more tedious and difficult task of 
growing irrigated rice while the backward pagans would 




Fig. 12. Rice Terraces on Mountain Side; Flooded with Water. Ifugao. 

content themselves with the simpler upland product, 
the reverse is partly true. The majority of pagans in 
Luzon not only depend wholly on swamp rice, but do so 
under enormous natural disadvantages. The splendid 
irrigation systems of the Bontok, Nabaloi and adjacent 
groups, culminating in the really astounding works of 
the Ifugao, have never failed to elicit the wonder and 



■82 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

admiration of all observers. These terraces and ditches 
involve an amount of labor, for maintenance as well as 
construction, that is almost unparalleled among peoples 
who in other traits of civilization have remained as un- 
civilized as these mountaineers. 

The immediate stimulus is no doubt the heavy con- 
gestion of population, which in parts of Bontok, Ifugao, 
and Kalinga today attains to a hundred and more souls 





■^*^«*) 



Fig. 13. Nabaloi Women weeding a Terraced Rice Field. 

per square mile. Other tribes of Luzon, such as the 
Apayao, and most of the pagans of Mindanao, grow only 
upland rice; but in every such case the population is 
very much smaller. The Apayao for instance hold a 
larger territory than the Ifugao with perhaps one-fifth 
of their population. And Mindanao as a whole appears 
always to have had not nearly as many inhabitants 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 83 

as Luzon. While loose groups like the Mandaya, 
Manobo, and Bukidnon each aggregate twenty-five to 
fifty thousand souls, these live very much scattered over 
really enormous stretches of country. The Bagobo 
area in Mindanao may be fairly compared with that of 
the Bontok or Ifugao ; but the Bagobo population is 
estimated to be only one-seventh and one-fifteenth as 
great respectively. 

However, numerous as they are, the Igorot and ad- 
jacent peoples are rude in their general culture, and the 
question therefore arises whether their fine irrigation 
system is an invention of their own or an importation; 
and if the latter, were its introducers they themselves 
when they first came to the Philippines, or some other 
people? As for the general question of local invention or 
importation, there can be little doubt. The idea of 
terrace irrigation was familiar to other Filipino groups 
and to many of the inhabitants of the East Indies 
generally. If nations like the Tagalog and Pampanga 
did not build the endless step fields of the Ifugao, it is 
because they possessed sufficient lowlands. The word 
Tagalog is said to mean, 'Hhose of the alog," the lands 
that are converted into marsh after a storm; whereas 
the name Pampanga is derived from pangan, a river 
bank. Most of the Pampanga country, in fact, is a vast 
swamp in the rainy season and stands more in need of 
drainage than of having water fed into the fields. 
Almost everywhere along the immediate coast heavily 
watered lowlands were available. Elsewhere in 
Malaysia a similar condition prevails. In Java, which 
is a rather narrow and distinctly mountainous island, 
whose population early became heavy, the same thing 
occurs as in Luzon. There are too many people for the 
bulk of them to live actually on the river mouths. 
The majority therefore dwell at some elevation and 



84 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

farm on irrigated terraces. Moreover, the system of 
terraced irrigation is extensively followed in both Japan 
and China; and if less widely practised in Indo-China, 
it is because the natural swamp lands are of greater 
extent in that peninsula and the population of many 
tracts less concentrated. On a broader view, therefore, 
the terraces of the Luzon mountaineers are by no 
means a unique phenomenon in the part of the world in 
question. They impress by their stupendousness and 
daring and by the contrast which they display with the 
general backward status of their makers; but their 
peculiar quality is one of intensity and not of kind. 

Now the almost unanimous verdict of both history 
and ethnology is that when a certain art is shared by a 
number of peoples, and evidence as to its origin is ob- 
tainable, it almost always becomes clear that this origin 
occurred among the more advanced rather than the less 
advanced peoples of the group ; or where both are now 
equally advanced in general civilization, then among that 
nation whose civilization is the oldest. On the basis of 
this well-established principle, it becomes practically 
certain that the Igorot or Ifugao was not the inventor of 
his system of irrigation. He undoubtedly extended it to 
conditions under which its pursuit has rarely been 
attempted by any other people; but the knowledge, 
the basic idea of the art, and the essentials of its tech- 
nique, must have developed elsewhere. Where this 
center of origination lay, is another question which can- 
not be entered into here because it is a general Malaysian 
or East Asiatic problem and not a Filipino one: but 
the source is likely to have been on the mainland of 
southeastern Asia; or if in the East Indies, then in that 
portion of them nearest Asia. 

It is more difficult to form a judgment as to who may 
have been the carriers of this invention to the interior 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 85 

of Luzon. Theoretically, it might have been the very 
ancestors of the wild people now settled there. But if 
so, they came from the higher center of civilization 
where the art of terracing took its origin. They might 
thus be expected to have brought along other achieve- 
ments, such as writing or statecraft. Since they are 
deficient in these elements of culture, it follows that 
they must have suffered a degeneration in all matters 
other than agriculture ; and of such a decadence there is 
not the least indication. 

It seems therefore distinctly more probable that the 
mountaineers of Luzon first settled in their present 
habitats and grew upland rice or other crops, or did not 
follow agriculture at all; and that subsequently the 
practice of growing part of their rice by irrigation be- 
came established through importation of the technique 
by more advanced peoples. As the mountain popula- 
tion increased, the new art became more and more 
valuable, and its practice was elaborated and perfected 
to a degree which the otherwise superior lowlanders did 
not attain, because necessity failed to spur them on. 

It is rather in support of this interpretation that 
apart from its actual irrigation works, the Igorot and 
Ifugao rice culture is an excessively simple one. The 
work is all done by hand. The planter is nothing but a 
stick; seeding, transplanting, and weeding are all 
carried on with the fingers. The only tool employed by 
the Ifugao is a simple wooden shovel. Where the plow 
is used, it seems to be an adaptation of Spanish usage. 

Throughout the Philippines rice is stored either in 
the house or in thatched granaries. It is cooked in 
bamboo joints, in pottery vessels, or in iron kettles 
according to the general advancement and trade facili- 
ties of each group. Being as tasteless as it is a nourish- 
ing food, a great variety of vegetable condiments are 



86 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

used by every Philippine people to flavor their daily 
diet. It may be added that not only is there always a 
full set of names for each of the many varieties of rice, 
but that rice in the husk or on the stalk is invariably 
known by a different name from cooked rice, precisely 
as we distinguish wheat and flour or cattle and beef. 

Various Food Plants. While rice is the represen- 
tative food of the Philippines and the only one that has 
impressed native imagination, it is far from being con- 
sumed in such preponderance as its leading place and 
high estimation might suggest. In fact, rice seems to 
constitute rather less than half the total food eaten in 
the archipelago. In Mindanao, where irrigation was 
slightly developed but the equatorial climate provided 
an unusual variety of other useful plants, the first 
Spaniards reported that comparatively little rice was 
grown; and this condition has been maintained, at 
least relatively, to most the islands. It is however true 
that the other food plants are of many kinds, and that 
any one of them alone is usually eaten to a less 
extent than rice. 

The one crop that as regards quantity is a rival of 
rice, and in certain districts surpasses it, is the camote 
or sweet potato, Batatas edulis. A century or so after 
their arrival, some of the Spaniards got it into their 
heads that this plant had been imported by them from 
Mexico, and the statement is still sometimes repeated. 
But the first explorers distinctly mention the camote, 
and there can be no doubt that it had long been one of 
the principal objects of cultivation. It requires much 
less care than rice, and can be grown, for a few years at 
least, on soil that would not yield the latter crop. 
Among the irrigating tribes that prize their rice ter- 
races as their most valuable possessions, sweet potato 
fields are sold only for nominal sums such as the value 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 87 

of the standing crop. With the Nabaloi it is bad form 
to rent a camote field: the rich must grant its tempor- 
rary use to the poor gratis. 

Local conditions determine the varying proportions of 
rice and sweet potatoes consumed. Thus among the 
Ifugao, the rice grown in the Kiangan district is esti- 
mated to bear a proportion of 9 to 2 to sweet potatoes; 
whereas in neighboring Banawe, the ratio is only 3 to 7. 

But there is no question of the preference of the 
Filipino. The sweet potato soon palls as a steady diet, 
whereas rice becomes a habit like wheat, or even an 
article craved. The Ifugao reckons as kadangyang or 
rich only those families that grow enough rice to last 
them, even though eaten at every meal, the year round. 
The mahitil or middle class are those whose supply gives 
out before the next harvest is ripe. The poor or 
nawatwat use sweet potatoes as a staple, helped out 
perhaps by the rice which they manage to raise on some 
little patch, or which they receive as wages for tilling 
the fields of the wealthy. 

In third place in Philippine agriculture maize is 
probably to be reckoned. This was of course introduced 
from America, but has long since formed an integral 
element of native farming, even among the most remote 
pagans who until recent years had never set eyes on a 
Caucasian, much less heard of the aboriginal American 
developer of the grain that they grew. The spread of 
useful plants is sometimes incredibly rapid, especially 
in the tropics. Two hundred years sufficed to establish 
not only maize but tobacco and several other American 
plants through large parts of the East Indies, Asia, and 
Africa as firmly as if they were indigenous. 

Of other annual crops, millet and beans were pre- 
Spanish, and are likely to have been introduced from 
Asia, perhaps in the first period of Hindu influence. 



88 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Gahi or taro is of rather more importance. It has a 
wide distribution in Oceania. 

Of palms and trees yielding fruits or other edible 
products, the Philippines contain many varieties that 
have been made use of since the prehistoric period: 
the sago, coconut, breadfruit, durian, orange, lemon, 
lime, and banana being the principal. 

The sago palm — its name is East Indian — is im- 
portant in many portions of the Philippines. In 
1582 it was reported to furnish the principal food supply 
on Mindanao. This tree requires practically no care 
after it has a proper start. 

The coconut palm was grown everywhere near the 
coast, but was of relatively less importance to the 
natives than in some of the smaller and more meagerly 
vegetated islands of the Indian and Pacific oceans. 
The same may be said of the breadfruit. The banana 
was perhaps of more consequence for the textile fiber — 
''Manila hemp" — which one of its smaller varieties 
yields, than as a source of food. 

Sugar cane was indigenous to the islands, at least 
was cultivated nearly everywhere when the Spaniards 
entered. It was long one of the principal plantation 
crops; but the ancient Filipinos greW it for themselves 
in order to ferment from it a wine or rum. Such wine, 
made either from sugar cane or from rice or sometimes 
from the sap of the nipa palm, was consumed in large 
quantities by every tribe, but invariably as an accom- 
paniment of religious feasting. 

The proportions of the subsistence of the Ifugao are 
computed to be as follows. Rice, 32 percent; sweet 
potatoes, 42; maize, 4; all other crops, 6; total from 
agriculture, 84. Domestic animals, partly imported, 
63^. Small clams from the flooded rice fields, 8; all 
other game, fish, or wild plant foods, 13^. It is evident 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 



89 



how insignificant animal breeding is in comparison with 
agriculture. This is undoubtedly true for all the pagan 
tribes, past and present. It is interesting that five- 
sixths of all the wild foods are constituted by the clams 
which are a by-product of the system of agriculture. 
With the Negrito, and among some 
^ groups advantageously situated for fish- 

._ ing, the ratio of wild foods no doubt rises 

considerably higher; but with these ex- 
ceptions the figures seem to be generally 
representative. From eight to nine-tenths 
of what the Filipino consumes is the pro- 
duct of his farms. 

Tobacco and Betel. Tobacco was 
introduced by the Spaniards, and its 
growth fostered or enforced in certain 
districts. Even today Manila tobacco 
enjoys considerable repute. Most of the 
natives have become addicted to it. But 
the original equivalent was betel, whose 
use still maintains its priority among 
many tribes, especially the pagan and 
Mohammedan ones. Betel is chewed. It 
irritates the gums, turns the saliva blood 
red, and blackens the teeth; but the taste 
for it is apparently acquired easily and 
retains a firm hold. The essential element 
Fig. 14. Incised is thc uut of thc areca palm, Areca catechu, 

Tube of Bamboo to ,.,. ,. , •iii -.it i 

hold Lime for Betel which IS sliccd, sprmkled with lime, and 

Chewmg. Bagobo. , . i <• r i ti • 7,7 

wrapped in a leaf of buyo. Piper betel. 
In 1903, 60,000 acres of Philippine lands were in areca, 
or nearly as much as in tobacco. The use of the two 
products is not mutually exclusive, but tends to be, 
and clearly is, so far as connection with religion or 
formulated social custom is concerned. 



90 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

In connection with the figures just cited, it may be 
mentioned that the number of acres devoted in 1903 to 
maize was a quarter of a million, to coconut three- 
eighths of a million, to ''hemp," the chief export, over 
half a million, to rice between three and four millions. 

Hemp and Cotton. The Spaniards found the 
natives cultivating two plants for use in spinning and 
weaving: cotton and the "hemp" which has been men- 
tioned as being in reality a small inedible banana, the 
abaca, Musa textilis. From the stalks of this, strong 
fibers are stripped which are much prized for civilized 
cordage. The Filipino wove and still weaves cloth from 
the fibers. The attractive textiles of the Bagobo are 
made in this material. Cotton was however of no less 
importance, and while its production in the islands is 
small because of a Spanish policy of discouraging or 
forbidding its cultivation in favor of tobacco and other 
monopolies, a number of pagan tribes still wear clothing 
of cotton. The Mangyan grow the plant today. The 
Christian Filipino has added a new textile material, 
piria, that is pineapple leaf fiber, from which, either plain 
or mixed with silk, valuable fabrics of the most beauti- 
ful semi-transparent finish are woven, both for men's 
and women's clothing. The Manila hemp plant appears 
to be indigenous to the Philippines, and was probably 
first used as it grew wild. Cotton, on the other hand, 
does not seem to be native, and was in all likelihood 
imported from the western East Indies, whence in 
turn it may be derived from India proper, the region to 
which all indications point as the original home of 
cotton culture and manufacture. 

Houses. The Filipino house is much the same 
among civilized and uncivilized tribes, and has changed 
but little since the islands were first visited by Euro- 
peans. It is a structure of wood or bamboo, with 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 91 

thatched roof, and floor raised above the ground. No 
traces of architecture in stone, either native, Hindu, or 
Mohammedan, have been found at any place in the 
archipelago. The Spanish edifices in Manila have 
several times suffered severely from earthquakes; yet 
it is not these seismic disturbances so much as his lack 
of cultural stimulation that kept the Filipino from 
construction in the more dignified and substantial 
material. Java, which is also severely shaken, is full of 
ruined Hindu temples, and Borneo is not without some 
traces. Had not the Philippines been so remote that 
the first force of Indian contact was spent before their 
shores were reached, we should undoubtedly find ancient 
stone buildings here also. 

There is nothing very distinctive about the Filipino 
house. Its general type occurs through the forested 
tropical parts of the earth, at any rate wherever the 
population does not live clustered in cities. The main 
requisite is a steep roof to provide a dense shade from 
the sun and shed the torrential rains. The higher the 
peak, the better will the roof accomplish the latter 
purpose, besides drawing up under itself the hottest 
air in the interior. In a country of palms and luxuriant 
grasses, thatch is by far the most easily put on material 
and perhaps the most durable. The only drawback is 
the danger from fire; but with the building so easily 
replaced, the risk is felt to be rather toward inmates 
and property. 

The second requisite is a floor that shall be raised above 
the dampness of the ground and the snakes and vermin 
that infest its surface. The Filipino floor is always a 
few feet above the soil, often eight or ten, and some- 
times, when houses are set in the forked branches of 
trees, twenty, forty, or even sixty feet. The latter 
elevation of course serves no purpose other than pro- 



92 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



tection from human enemies, and is only practicable 
among rude communities that live in isolated families 
or scattered local groups. The tree house is an old 




Fig. 15. Tree House. Gaddang. 

institution in the Philippines. It is still considerably 
used by the Gaddang and Kalinga in Luzon, by the 
Manobo and Mandaya of Mindanao, and even by some 
members of one Mohammedan group, the Moros of 
Lake Lanao, from whom comes the specimen exhibited 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 



93 



in the Hall. In spite of its picturesque appeal to the 
imagination, the tree house cannot be looked upon as 
being in principle more than a superficial modification 
of the one generic house type prevalent throughout the 
Philippines. The Bontok, Kankanai, and Nabaloi are 
the only non-Negrito people in the Philippines to build 
directly on the ground. 



\ 



^ifiiigi'iiRiei] 



liiUiiM 



i I 



Fig. 16. Moro Dwellings. Except fur being built over the water, the type 
is characteristic of Philippine houses generally. 



The floor is most frequently made of bamboos, either 
split or in the round. For a hearth, a box of earth 
serves adequately, or a pottery vessel constructed for 
the purpose. Fire being required only for cooking, a 
small hearth is sufficient and a chimney unnecessary. 
Such smoke as there is rises under the thatched eaves. 
The space under the floor is often more or less enclosed, 
and during the day serves as a convenient place for the 
women to pound rice in the wooden mortar, while at 
night pigs or fowls are often kept there for protection. 



94 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Some of the Luzon mountaineers perform sacrifices and 
hold the long death watch over the corpse beneath their 
house. If the ground space is not utilized for any of 
these purposes, it is generally because the posts on 
which the house rests are set in water or in soil which is 
periodically covered by the tides. 

The least important parts of the house were its walls. 
Some of the ruder edifices, especially among the 
Negritos, occasionally lack these, the long gabled roof 
taking their place. Generally, rather low walls of thatch, 
bamboo slats, or wooden slabs are added. Windows are 
more frequent at present than in early times. The 
entrance is by a ladder of bamboo; in Cagayan, the 
shin bones of fallen foes were sometimes used as rungs. 
A porch or gallery at the level of the elevated floor 
often runs around the house. This is not customary 
among the mountain tribes even today, but early 
Spanish descriptions show it to be a native device. The 
interior is usually one large room. If compartments 
are present, they can generally be traced to Spanish 
influence. People of high rank, especially women, 
formerly sometimes let down a curtain of mats when 
they retired for the night. 

The entire structure was put together without nails. 
The Filipino did not know this article; probably if he 
had known it, iron would have been too valuable to 
him to employ for a need that could be satisfied by 
lashings of rattan, or at most a little mortising. Where 
storms threatened, houses were often anchored to 
trees or the ground by lines of rattan. 

In detail, there are of course innumerable variations 
of size, proportions, and materials from the general 
type described. Probably every nationality in the 
islands built a kind of house distinctive enough to be 
recognizable by the expert. But these differences are 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 95 

on the whole so superficial as to possess interest only 
for the specialist. 

The large model of a house displayed in the Hall 
represents an average dwelling of the modern Christian 
native in the country districts. The uninhabited 
ground space is so heavily stockaded with bamboo as to 
give an impression of forming an integral part of the 
house, whereas in reality the single story is situated 
above it. The materials, thatching, ladder, verandah, 
windows, and shutters are representative. 

The houses of the wealthy and even of chiefs did not 
differ from those of common men except for being larger 
and better built. The increase in size was usually in 
one direction only. Thus the chief's house, which served 
for public gatherings and ceremonies as well as for the 
domicile of the head man's family and retinue, was of 
nearly the usual breadth, but much longer. Such long 
houses are described in early sources for the Tagalog 
and are still used by the Bagobo. 

Rice granaries were built in many districts, but in 
others the harvest was stored in the living house. 
Groups of dwellings were often surrounded by stockades, 
as among the Tinggian. The Moro chiefs sometimes 
went so far as to build forts of wood or heavy bamboos, 
but this practice hardly prevailed outside of the Mo- 
hammedan regions. 

Religious Structures. Other than the dwel- 
lings of their chiefs, the Filipinos seem to have known no 
public buildings, nor, strictly speaking, any edifices 
devoted to worship. The pagans sacrificed in the living 
house, under it, outdoors, or sometimes in thickets or 
groves. The practice of the now Christian nations seems 
to have been the same. Names for places of worship 
were recorded by the early missionaries in several 
dialects, but descriptions usually refer only to bowers, 



96 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

enclosures, or entirely open places, and the etymology 
of the terms would make them as applicable to any 
temporarily chosen spot of sacrifice as to a permanent 
structure devoted to the purpose. Thus the word 
simbahan, which the Tagalog now applies to a church, 
by no means implies that they possessed a corresponding 
ancient structure. In fact, the chief's long living house 
was so called during the period when it was in use for a 
ceremony. 

There was one strictly religious building almost 
universally prevalent in the islands, the so-called spirit 
house. But this is too small for a congregation and often 
even for the officiating priest to enter. It is really not 
a house, but an altar in the form of a house and believed 
to be more or less frequented by spirits. Many of the 
pagan tribes, both northern and southern, still construct 
these little edifices in their fields and at other points. 
Invariably they have a roof resting on poles: walls 
and floor may be present or absent. Sometimes there 
are three walls, the fourth being left open. Tribal 
custom varies in these details. Plates, coconut bowls, 
or other receptacles are often set or hung inside. In 
these, offerings of food are deposited; or the priest 
may pray or recite a formula before or in the little 
structure. The ancient Tagalog at times erected these 
spirit houses inside their dwellings. They are des- 
cribed as having been set apart like a tower and entered 
only over a little bridge of bamboo. Idols and other 
religious paraphernalia were kept in them. These 
spirit houses are one of the most characteristic features 
of Filipino religion, and the only type of ceremonial 
building well established in native usage. 

Settlements. In general, the Filipino was not 
given to town life, or to clustering with his kind in 
considerable numbers. Even the capitals of the Moham- 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 97 

medan sultans often contained no more than two or 
three thousand souls. To the present day Manila 
remains the only large city in the archipelago. With all 
the development of industry and trade during three 
centuries of Spanish rule, there had grown up less than 
half a dozen settlements of ten thousand inhabitants or 
over when the Americans took possession. Cebu, when 
Magellan landed and the Spaniards first established 
themselves, is said to have contained five to ten thou- 
sand persons in the capital and environs. Not many 
years after, the town had shrunk considerably. 

Among the modern non-Christian tribes there is 
considerable variety of usage as regards the size of 
villages. In Mindanao the custom is to live in small 
scattered groups. So numerous a people as the Ifugao 
follow the same practice, their houses, in spite of con- 
stant feuds, being placed with reference to the fields 
rather than assembled for defence. The Tinggian live 
more definitely in villages; and with the Bontok towns 
of a thousand people occur. However, this region of 
more concentrated villages is precisely the district in 
which the institution of the ato or ward within the town 
is developed. Inasmuch as governmental and religious 
functions inhere in the ato, the village as a whole is in 
reality little more than an accidental conglomeration of 
smaller units. 

In the islands as a whole, irrespective of religion or 
degree of civilization, more than one-half of all the vil- 
lages contain less than four hundred inhabitants, and 
half of the total population is resident in villages con- 
taining less than eight hundred persons. The ' ' villages' ' 
referred to in these data are barrios, the smallest govern- 
mental unit recognized ; in reality a barrio often contains 
a number of settlements each bearing a name of its own. 
The number of actual villages is therefore considerably 



98 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

greater than the 13,400 barrios recognized, and the 
average population of each considerably less than the 
figures given would indicate. 

General Character of Industries. The Chris- 
tian Filipino is often charged with indolence, but those 
who first knew him frequently commended his industry. 
It is likely that the alteration in economic conditions, 
and a more modern standard of judgment, is respon- 
sible for the apparent change. The pagan peoples have 
never been accused of being lazy aboirt their own occu- 
pations, and those of northern Luzon are universally 
described as extremely hard working, irrespective of 
sex or age. Their method of agriculture is feasible 
only to consistently industrious people. 

The Filipino is also quick to learn, like all East 
Indians, and adept with his hands; but it must be 
admitted that his manufactures lack pronounced artistic 
quality. He often finishes his work nicely; a clean job 
evidently appeals to him; yet he rarely goes farther or 
attempts to make his product positively beautiful. 
It is not that he leaves it ugly ; but among other peoples 
of equal mechanical ability, skill flowers more often into 
specific aesthetic developments. 

Bamboo and rattan are the materials most used in 
manufactures. Bamboo serves for receptacles, cooking 
vessels, spear shafts and heads, fire-making apparatus, 
musical instruments, boat rigging, and a variety of 
other objects, besides being used to an enormous extent 
in house construction. Rattan makes lashings and 
wrappings of all sorts, braided ornaments and bow- 
strings, the material of baskets, and generally is a 
substitute for cordage. Wood the Filipino employs con- 
siderably less, no doubt because it is harder to work than 
these two abundant and readily serviceable plants; but 
it enters into buildings and boats, weapon handles. 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 99 

bowls and spoons, looms, and the like. It is however 
rarely decorated; and the carvings of men and animals 
that occasional tribes make on their implements, or as 
figurines, are distinctly rude. The specific cause of this 
aesthetic poverty of woodwork may be the greater 
prevalence of technique developed in bamboo, which 
material lends itself naturally to incisions and etchings, 
but scarcely to true carving. None of the idols of the 
Tagalog and Bisaya have been preserved, but they 
appear to have been roughly made, perhaps not 
materially superior in artistic quality to those carved of 
porous fern root or stem by the modern Igorot tribes. 

Animal skins, whether of the deer, wild boar, or 
domestic buffalo, are very little used by the Filipinos, 
and a proper tanning or dressing art can scarcely be 
said to exist. 

Pottery. Pottery shares the just mentioned quali- 
ties. It is made almost universally, but is rarely orna- 
mented, and usually strictly utilitarian. The original 
type is represented among the Bontok and the Subanun 
in Luzon and Mindanao. The clay is pulverized, mois- 
tened, and beaten or kneaded, without tempering 
material other than perhaps chopped grass. A lump 
is indented with the fist, and the hole pushed out from 
within, the other hand modeling the exterior or piecing 
on to the margin. The Tinggian work the clay while 
revolving it on a winnowing basket set on the ground. 
It is not clear whether this device is aboriginal or a 
degenerate potter's wheel imitated from the Christian 
Ilokano. The final shaping is done with a paddle that 
taps the outer surface while a smooth stone is held 
inside. Baking is in the open air, without a kiln, 
in a fire of dung, wood, or pine bark. The Bontok 
woman applies a resin to the red hot vessel, which pro- 
duces a lustrous coating and renders the walls less 
porous. It is not a true glaze. 



100 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



The Christian tribes now make a plain red ware that 
is surprisingly uniform among the various nationalities. 
If there is any decoration at all, it consists of slight pat- 
terns in white, or in a few incisions or relief additions. 
This ware is sometimes made by hand and sometimes on 
the potter's wheel. 




Fig. 17. Red Jar and White Pattern, Bikol; Moro Jar with Lid. 

The Moros manufacture glazed vessels, but it is not 
known whether this is a true pottery glaze, imported 
along with the knowledge of firearms and other elements 
of Mohammedan culture, or an after treatment as in 
Bontoli. The Moros also mark the surface into areas 
by means of incised lines and color these areas ; but the 
color appears to be applied after the pot is baked. 
At that, these feeble attempts represent the most that 
the Filipino has done in the way of beautifying his 
pottery. 

This is the more remarkable because for centuries 
glazed and semi-porcelain wares have been imported 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 101 

from China and distributed thrcughoit the Ptihp- 
pines, serving as the most precious heirlooms of the 
natives. All the pagan tribes possess such jars, which 
are carefully preserved for use as rice wine containers in 
great religious feasts, and are parted with only on the 
most important occasions, such as blood feud settle- 
ments or marriage contracts. Morga wrote in 1609 
that among the Tagalog, Pampanga, Pangasinan, 
and Ilokano "certain earthenware jars are found among 
the natives. They are very old, of a brownish color, 
and not handsome. . . . The natives are unable to 
give any explanation of where and when they got them, 
for now they are not brought to the islands, or made 
there. The Japanese seek and esteem them . . . and 
keep them in brocade cases." Similar vessels went to 
Borneo, where certain types maintained a value, until 
recently, of $1500 to $3000. 

This imported ware, which the natives frequently do 
not recognize as Chinese but attribute to the gods or the 
beginning of the world, dates from the Sung and Ming 
dynasties and was probably manufactured in Kwang- 
tung province. There are two principal types : yellow- 
ish or brown jars ornamented with dragon patterns, 
made probably from the thirteenth to the fifteenth 
centuries; and blue or green pieces, undecorated, of the 
fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Both are a hard 
glazed ware, similar to Chinese household vessels, of no 
great value in that country, and were probably specially 
manufactured for export to Malaysia, where distance 
and rarity enhanced the price enormously. The natives 
seem to have felt themselves totally unable to imitate 
these pieces, and made no attempts to do so. 

The pottery which the Japanese obtained in the 
Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
and still called Luzon ware, is of a different type. 



102 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



It is not known whether it represents a third variety 
of Chinese importation, of which the Japanese demand 
has drained the islands ; or an import from Siam, similar- 
ly dissipated; or a manufacture in Luzon by Chinese 
immigrants. 

Burial jars, some of native and others of Chinese 
origin, have been found in the Batanes and Babuyanes 




Fig. 18. Moro Outrigger Canoes 

islands north of Luzon, on Mindoro, and in western 
Mindanao. Interment in pottery vessels must thus 
have once been widely diffused in the Philippines, as it 
was in Borneo. 

Boats. All the coastwise Filipinos used boats of 
the well known East Indian and Oceanic type — the 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 103 

outrigger vessel. Some, which were really ships, carried 
a hundred rowers and thirty fighting men. They were 
of course built up of planks, while smaller examples 
were dug out of a log. All but the smallest canoes were 
provided with two outriggers — stout bamboos or light 
logs extending parallel with the hull but held at some 
distance from it by a bamboo framework. The out- 
riggers made the boat absolutely impossible to overturn. 
Even a vessel entirely filled with water could not capsize^ 
nor, being built wholly of floatable materials, could it 
sink. Wooden pegs and rattan lashings held the parts 
together. On the larger war vessels, a platform raised 
above the middle length of the hull served the fighters; 
and these in turn were protected by an awning of mats. 
The mast, or sometimes two, could be shipped or 
lowered with the sail, which in former times was prob- 
ably of matting. Paddles were also used for propulsion. 
The draft was very shallow, allowing even the larger 
boats to be drawn up on shore over night or on occasion. 
With such vessels the Moros long practised piracy and 
contested control of the southern seas with the Span- 
iards. A complete boat of this type, though smaller 
than the war praos, is exhibited in the collection. 

Fire=Making. The Filipinos, like most natives 
that possess bamboo, did not employ the firedrill, which 
is most practical in wood, but used the fire-saw to pro- 
duce combustion by friction. This saw consists of a 
bamboo edge rubbed back and forth in a notch in a 
horizontal piece. The siliceous particles contained in 
the bamboo increase friction and usually ensure the 
prompt production of a spark. 

Another method, seemingly restricted to Palawan, is 
to draw a rattan cord through a notch cut on the under 
side of a stick or slab of bamboo held down with the 
foot. This plan allows the full lift of the back to be 



104 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 




Fig 19. Use of the Fire Piston producing a Spark by Sudden Air Compression. 

applied as the operator stands, and is very effective. 
Another advantage is that the cord can be carried about 
coiled into an armlet. 

The fire piston is an extremely interesting device 
employed by some of the Tinggian of Luzon and 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 105 

the Bukidnon of Mindanao. A plunger works snugly 
in a wood, bamboo, horn, or metal tube. A little tinder 
is laid inside. A smart blow on the knob heading the 
plunger compresses the air to the point of producing 
heat enough to ignite the cotton; but considerable 
dexterity is required for success. The origin of this 
device remains obscure. It seems hardly capable of 
designed invention by any but a civilized people con- 
versant with physical laws; and no analogous imple- 
ment is certainly known which could have led to the 
discovery by accident. The cannon is perhaps the most 
likely prototype whose suggestion led to the uncalcu- 
lated invention; but the blowgun, the smith's bellows, 
and the betel mortar also present similarities. The fire 
piston occurs also in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Molucca 
— in fact wherever the true Malay has established him- 
self ; and in Burma, Siam, and Anam. Its employment 
in the Philippines precisely by the uncultivated tribes 
in the interior, the ''Indonesians" or Proto-Malays, is 
therefore puzzling, and another of the many indications 
of the intricacy of Filipino civilization. The fire piston 
has also been known in Europe, but only as a sort of 
mechanical toy, and seems not to have been discovered 
there until the nineteenth century, so that its diffusion 
from this source over the whole of Indo-China and the 
East Indies within a generation or two, not to mention 
its firm establishment among the remote mountain 
Filipinos, seems incredible. The complete fascinating 
story of this extraordinary implement may never be 
recovered. 

Flint and steel were perhaps the commonest fire 
implement in the Philippines, at least until the introduc- 
tion of phosphorus matches, as might be expected 
from an iron-working people. If no other steel was 
available, the back of the bolo or head ax was used. 



106 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Iron Industry. All the peoples in the Philippines 
use iron, and no traces of a distinctive age of stone or 
copper have ever been found. Even the Negritos, 
although they do not work metal, may be said to be 
living in an iron age condition, because they possess 
knives obtained in trade from their neighbors. 

There is every possibility that the islands may have 
been occupied before metals were known. This would 
be the period or condition of culture corresponding to 
the stone age of many other parts of the world. The 
reasons why no definite evidences of such a primitive 
type of culture have been found in the Philippines may 
be several. There has been very little archaeological 
exploration. The natural density of vegetation would 
tend to conceal such remains as there might be. And 
finally, conditions in a typically tropical environment 
are not such as to favor the development of a distinctive 
stone culture. Bamboo, for instance, yields fairly 
serviceable spears, knives, and scrapers with but little 
shaping. It probably requires less technical skill to 
work into useful implements than stone. It is true that 
stone might well be employed to fashion the bamboo in 
such a nascent culture stage; but if so, a split cobble, 
made on occasion and immediately discarded, would 
easily answer all requirements, and thus come to leave 
no traces, or but the slightest, of the use of stone. At 
any rate, the traces have not been found; and so far 
back as our knowledge extends, all Philippine tribes 
have enjoyed the use of at least some metal tools, either 
of their own or of foreign manufacture. 

A division can however be made between the native 
peoples having so little iron that it was mainly their 
utensil-making tools which were of that material, and 
the more advanced groups that possessed a greater 
abundance of the metal. In the former class there 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 



107 



belong at the present time, besides the Negritos, some 
of the more remote pagans. Many of the unconverted 
nationalities, however, have long since not only obtained 
the material, but learned to work it : the Tinggian, the 
Kalinga, the Bontok, the Bagobo, and the Mandaya, 
all pagans, are smiths. At the time of discovery the 
majority of Philippine nations were in this condition. 
They knew how to work the metal, but did not yet 
obtain a sufficient supply to meet all their wants; so 
that iron and bamboo-tipped spears, for instance, were 
used side by side. 




Fig. 20. Steel Fighting Ax. Kalinga. 



This condition was the consequence of the iron in- 
dustry not being native to the Philippines. It obviously 
reached them probably by way of Borneo, from peoples 
among whom the art was already well developed. At 
first,- manufactured articles are likely to have been in- 
troduced; subsequently, the raw material was imported 
in trade, and with it the knowledge of working it. The 
operations of mining and smelting were not understood. 
In fact, very little advancement has been made in this 
direction through the past four centuries, possibly 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 109 

because the islands seem to be naturally poor in iron 
ores. The mineral has been worked in Bulacan, but the 
mining here appears to be entirely post-Spanish. In 
Borneo, on the other hand, even the interior tribes 
mine and smelt iron ore, so that the industry is likely 
to have a considerable antiquity. The Filipino smith 
always remained dependent on importation of his raw 
material, and in this sense his entire industry may be 
described as a parasitic one. 

The plan of working is much the same among all the 
mountain tribes, and was no doubt followed in very 
similar form by the ancient Tagalog and Bisaya. The 
bar or ingot of metal is heated in a charcoal fire into 
which air is pumped from a bellows working in two or 
four bamboo cylinders. It is beaten with stone ham- 
mers, and the art of tempering by plunging into water is 
understood. In this way are made swords or battle 
axes, knives, the points or edges of agricultural imple- 
ments, and the like. Contrary to the custom of Africa, 
where a similar iron technique prevails, the metal is 
scarcely used for ornaments in the Philippines, in all 
likelihood because the trade that brought in the raw 
material also introduced brass. The African not only 
works his iron, but extracts it, so that his industry, 
whatever its origin, is long since a self-sufficient home 
institution. 

The fine steel blades, often chased or inlaid with other 
metals, which are so conspicuous in ethnological collec- 
tions from the Philippines, are almost wholly the work 
of the Moros; in fact in part probably of non-Filipino 
Mohammedans in the islands farther west. Such weap- 
ons as the pagan tribes possess in this excellent work- 
manship — for instance, the Bagobo — are obtained from 
the Moros, or are made in inferior imitation of them. 
This is corroborated by the fact that in Luzon, and in 



110 



PEOPLES OP THE PHILIPPINES 




Fig. 22. Swords of the Mohammedans: a, kampilan; b, barong; 
c, d, wavy and straight kris: e, "beheading knife." 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 111 

fact all the islands other than Mindanao, the character- 
istic shapes as well as quality of Moro steel work are 
lacking. 

There are several types of these beautiful blades : the 
kris, which comes both straight and wavy; the kampilan, 
a long straight sword; a bent blade of about the same 
length which is often called a beheading knife ; and the 
harong, a heavy and rather short sword or knife with 
slightly curved edge. The handles are of wood, horn, 
ivory, or brass, usually carved, and often exquisitely 
designed and executed. These types of weapons belong 
to the later stratum of East Indian culture of pre- 
dominant Hindu and Arabic influence. They are in no 
sense peculiar to the Philippines; in fact, characteristic 
rather of Malacca and Java and Borneo, and unknown 
in the greater part of our archipelago. 

The central and northern tribes chiefly use the holo, 
a combination of weapon and tool, very similar to the 
machete, unornamented, long for a knife and somewhat 
short for a sword. 

Copper, Bronze, and Gold. Brass and bronze 
represent a second set of trade materials whose import in- 
to the Philippines has been going on for a long time. All 
the tribes once used gongs manufactured in China, or 
at least made of Chinese bronze. These are still em- 
ployed as the chief musical instrument by the Moham- 
medan as well as pagan tribes; in fact, form the charac- 
teristic accompaniment to dances. As might be 
expected in view of their remote source, their value in 
native estimation is usually quite disproportionately 
high. It is customary to treasure them almost as heir- 
looms, and they frequently form part of the purchase 
price in transactions where dignity is an essential factor, 
especially weddings and the payment of blood money. 
Naturally, they were traded from tribe to tribe, so that 



112 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



even the interior peoples have long possessed a supply 
of them. Even the name by which these gongs are 
known, gansa or agong, is the same in origin as Javanese 
gong from which we derive our word. 

Brass, that is zinc alloy, as opposed to the tin-copper 
mixture which makes bronze, is chiefly worked in the 
Mohammedan districts. However, there has been some 
permeation of more remote regions by the art of work- 
ing this material, for the Bontok and other mountaineers 





Fig. 23. Pipes of Pottery — Nabalol^ and Cast Brass — Bontok 



of Luzon make small castings in this metal although 
their product cannot compare in fineness with that of 
the Moros or even the pagan tribes adjacent to the 
Moros. The process seems everywhere to be essentially 
the same. A model of the desired object is made in 
beeswax. This is surrounded by a clay mould. On 
heating, the wax melts and runs off, the molten brass 
or sometimes copper is then poured in its place, and the 
clay mould broken away. This is what is technically 
known as the cire perdue process. The Bontok chiefly 
cast small pipes in this way. The Mohammedans make 
belts, anklets, bracelets, sword handles, blades, bells, 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 



113 



and boxes for betel. These betel boxes usually contain 
compartments, and are sometimes inlaid with designs 
in softer metal. The entire art is clearly of Asiatic 





Fig. 24. Moro Betel Boxes Cast in Brass. The lower is inlaid with soft 
white metal. 

origin and even its simpler forms must be looked 
upon as local degenerations and not as truly native 
industries. 

The one metal which the Filipino can possibly lay 
claim to have discovered the use and working of, is 



114 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

gold. This occurs in many of the islands, in fact on 
all the larger ones; never in great quantity, but suffi- 
cient to repay its extraction by a people whose labor 
possesses no great economic value. The gold was ob- 
tained both in placers and in bed rock. Northern 
Luzon was apparently the source of greatest supply, 
and when the Spaniards occupied the coast districts, 
they found the so-called Igorot in the habit of descend- 
ing from the mountains to exchange gold for the pro- 
ducts and imported trade articles of the lowlanders. 
In the region of Suyok in Lepanto, the Kankanai still 
mine some gold in this way. They use stone hammers 
for the purpose. Elsewhere in the islands gold is 
sometimes washed out of the river gravels; but this is 
among Christianized peoples. Ornaments of gold were 
also found in use among all the tribes by the Spaniards, 
and continue to be prized and worn by some of them. 

This development of the gold industry by no means 
argues a similar proficiency of the Filipino in the use of 
other metals. Gold usually occurs in the pure metallic 
state, and its softness renders it very easy to work by 
beating between stones. Neither smelting nor casting 
are necessary. In a sense, therefore, the gold industry 
as the Filipinos know it is not properly a metallurgical 
art. 

It would be interesting to know whether the natives 
themselves discovered the presence of gold in their 
country and the fact that it could be worked into orna- 
ments, or whether they became aware of its possibilities 
only after the knowledge of other metals had reached 
them from outside and stimulated them to the acquisi- 
tion of gold. 

Baskets and Mats. Without exception, every 
nationality in the Philippines makes baskets. The types 
of vessels and the techniques employed are curiously 



THE MATERIAL SIDE3 OF LIFE 



115 



uniform. Of course, there occur local differences of 
shape and pattern ; but the superficiality of these varia- 
tions is much more conspicuous than their distinctness. 
The simplest process in which baskets are made is the 




Fig. 25. Brass Vase. Moro. 

ordinary '4n and out" or cloth weave. This is used by 
every Fihpino tribe, not only for baskets but for mat- 
ting. This technique is usually designated wicker or 
checker ware. 

When this weave is slightly elaborated through each 
strand or splint being passed over and under two or more 
transverse strands at a time, instead of over and under 



116 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 






Fig. 26. Philippine Baskets. Checker or wicker weave: 6, Hill people 
of Panay; c, Bontok; twilled: a, Tagalog; e, Tirurai; d, Bagobo;/, Bontok. 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 117 

only one, a diagonal effect is obtained which easily yields 
patterns if materials of two colors are employed. This 
process is twilling, and is equally adaptable to baskets 
and to mats. It is by far the most commonly used weave 
throughout the Philippines. Its predominance is 
rather common in tropical countries, and seems to be 
the outcome of the qualities of the materials provided 
by nature. Bamboo, rattan, palm leaves, and other 
materials that split easily into thin flat strips or splints 
render work in twilling very rapid, and thus offer every 
inducement to the weaver to give this process the pre- 
ference over others. 

The third process used in Philippine basketry manu- 
facture is that known as coiling. This is really a form 
of sewing, although usually performed without a needle. 
A foundation is coiled on itself and the successive lay- 
ers are sewn or lashed together by more flexible wrap- 
pings. This process has been found in use in a variety 
of Philippine islands; so that while it may not enjoy a 
universal distribution, it is clearly quite generally 
diffused. Technically, two chief types of coiling are 
distinguished : single and multiple rod. In the latter a 
bundle of stems replaces the single rod foundation of 
the former. The world over, multiple foundation is 
probably the more common. It is therefore rather 
strange that not a single basket coiled on a multiple 
foundation seems to have been reported from the 
Philippines. Possibly the preference of the islanders 
for the unit foundation is to be explained by their having 
materials available which easily come in considerable 
lengths and split into strips of uniform thickness. 
Where round twigs have to be used as foundation in 
coiling, considerable paring or other preparation is 
normally necessary to overcome their natural taper; 
which if uncorrected would render the finished basket 



118 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

coarse in texture and irregular in form. The unevenness 
in such case is much more easily overcome by operating 
with three or more rods treated as a bundle. The 
luxuriant growths of monocotyledonous plants that 
flourish in the home of the Filipino perhaps have en- 
couraged his predilection for the technique of unit 
foundation coiling. As might be expected, this pre- 
dominance is not confined to the Philippines, but ex- 
tends over adjacent parts of the world. 

Twining, the process by which two or more weft 
strands are simultaneously wound among the warp, 
is one of the most widely spread of all basketry tech- 
niques, particularly in temperate latitudes, but is 
practically unknown in the Philippines. The entire 
collection of the Museum contains only one or two speci- 
mens made in this technique. 

Matting of both the checker and twilled types is 
widely manufactured, but does not attain either the 
fineness or the great variety of uses as in some other 
parts of Oceania. Many of the mats are woven without 
any pattern. They rarely attain sufficient softness to 
make possible their use as clothing. They are also not 
employed for house walls or as currency, as in certain 
Pacific islands. 

Woven Textiles. From mats to cloth is only a step. 
Cloth, in fact, is merely matting made of thread-like 
material handled on a frame or loom. The two principal 
cloth materials of the ancient Filipino were cotton and 
abaca, the fiber of the banana-like plant known in com- 
merce as Manila hemp. The cultivation of both of these 
has already been discussed under agriculture. Today, 
the use of cotton tends to prevail among the Christian 
and Mohammedan nationalities, that of abaca among 
the pagans of Mindanao. The abaca cloth is stiff and 
somewhat coarse but very durable, and lends itself to 



120 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

pleasing sombre shades of dye. In the Bontok region, 
old style cloth was woven chiefly of bark fibers. 

The only weaving machinery known to the native 
was the hand loom, one end of which was suspended, 
while the other was frequently attached around the 
weaver's waist. As might be expected from such a 
habit, the bolt of cloth was often of some length, but 
rather narrow. 

The Bagobo practice tie-dyeing. Bundles of fibers or 
threads are wrapped and then immersed. The wrapped 
portions preserve the natural color, the intervening 
spaces taking the dye. Very effective although rather 
difficult weaves are obtained by this process. The 
Bagobo also tie finished cloth into wrapped knots to 
produce patterns by dipping. Tie-dyeing is believed 
to have originated in India. Its occurrence in the 
Philippines is therefore not so remarkable as the fact 
that a process which is usually reckoned an advanced 
one, should have survived only or chiefly among a 
pagan people. 

The very beautiful and often extremely valuable 
piha cloth of the Christian Filipino has already been 
mentioned. It is woven both with and without silk. 
The latter material is of course imported, or at least the 
art was. Linen, true hemp, and wool were also unknown 
to the Filipino prior to the arrival of Europeans. 

Tapa, or bark cloth, although not a textile, is in its 
use a substitute for woven cloths, and is part of the 
ancient cultural property which the Filipinos share 
with the East Indians and Oceanians in general. It is 
made from the halete and other trees. The inner bark is 
stripped off in layers, soaked, and beaten. Philippine 
bark cloth is rather hastily made and never attains 
either the fineness of texture or degree of ornamentation 
which distinguishes Polynesian tapa. It is rarely 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 121 

pounded into a pulp, but has its fibers remaining 
distinct; and whatever softness the material possesses 
is due rather to its natural qualities than to the prepara- 
tion. This cloth of bark is the only one used by the 
Negritos, except for such true textiles as they may 
acquire in trade or plunder. It is also still to be found 
among a number of pagan tribes other than the 
Negritos, as appears from an inspection of the Museum's 
exhibit. It may have been used even by the ancient 
Tagalog and Bisaya. 

Men's Clothing. The basic article of men's dress 
in the Philippines is the breechclout, popularly known 
among Americans as the G-string — a narrow strip of 
cloth passed between the legs and held up at each end 
by a belt. Sometimes the strip is long enough to serve 
both as belt and clout proper. The mountain tribes still 
adhere to the breechcloth, and it was once universal 
among the brown peoples of the islands. The majority 
have now discarded it, but only because of the sub- 
stitution of more elaborate dress. As for the aboriginal 
habits of the Negrito, there is some doubt. Today, he 
wears a clout of cloth when he can afford to trade it from 
his more advanced neighbors. If he cannot, he appears 
to be nearly equally content with a clout of bark cloth 
or nothing at all. It is therefore not unlikely that his 
ancient habit was complete nudity. 

The first piece of clothing to be added to the breech- 
clout was evidently a coat or jacket. This was 
usually short-sleeved, often sewn together in front, was 
put on over the head like a shirt, and was always collar- 
less. The Spaniards found both Tagalog and Bisaya 
wearing these little coats. The Moros use them uni- 
versally, and appear to have done so throughout the 
historic period. From them the Bagobo and other pagan 
tribes of the south have derived the custom. As usual, 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 123 

northern Luzon has remained more backward. Among 
the Tinggian, Kahnga, and Apayao, the jacket is worn, 
but among other mountain tribes it is rather rarely put 
on and some groups continue to do altogether without 
it. This article of clothing is thus clearly not aborigi- 
nally primitive on the one hand, nor very recent on the 
other. Its introduction into the islands appears to be 
pre-Mohammedan ; and, like so many other things in 
Filipino civilization, its original source is almost 
certainly to be looked for on the mainland of Asia and 
therefore probably in India. 

The third piece of dress which the Filipino put on in 
his history, was his trousers. Like the jacket or any 
tailored garments, trousers were of course adopted only 
after true cloth was in general use. Bark cloth is un- 
suitable, and skins the Filipino scarcely used. The 
trousers were usually short, both in the waist and the 
leg. Knee length was the most customary. 

Trousers are likely to have been a Mohammedan 
introduction. The Bagobo and other pagans of Minda- 
nao quite obviously wear them as a result of contact 
with the Moros. The Bisaya and Tagalog were still 
using the breechclout when the Spaniards first saw 
them. The pagans of Luzon do not wear breeches 
today, except so far as they have sporadically taken 
them up in imitation of the Christians, who in turn cut 
their trousers on the European model. The pre- 
Christian center of distribution of this garment is 
therefore clearly the Mohammedan region. 

Shoes are very little worn by any of the natives even 
at the present time. In the old days, every variety of 
footwear seems to have been wholly unknown. 

Headwear. As in so many other parts of the 
world, the head, as the most conspicuous part of the 
body, was adorned long before there was thought of 



124 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

protecting the feet. At present, the hat is perhaps the 
most striking article of wear throughout the archipelago. 
Other than the Mohammedan, who clings to the turban 
style of headdress, and a few of his neighbors, there is 
scarcely a brown people in the islands that does not 
habitually affect something that may properly be called 
a hat. With the tribes of Igorot affiliation, this is quite 
rudimentary : a basket about four inches in diameter, or 
even a wooden bowl, worn on the back instead of the 
top of the head, and serving either wholly as ornament 
or as a receptacle in which useful little things are 
carried. Those of the northern pagans who border on 
Christian peoples wear hats that shield from sun and 
rain ; and the Christians put on a great variety. These 
always differ as between one nationality and another, 
and often several types are in use among the same 
people. They are made of basketry, palm leaves, 
gourds, or wood. Some are fully as large as a parasol, but 
nearly fiat. Others are rounded and attain considerable 
height . The simpler forms show only a single curvature ; 
but in many parts there is a definite distinction between 
crown and brim. There appear to be considerably more 
than a hundred hat types worn in the archipelago, and 
their thorough classification promises to be of great 
interest. There is perhaps no other manufactured 
article whose distribution is so universal, and in whose 
making fancy and style are accorded so large a range. 

At the same time, it is possible that this entire de- 
velopment has taken place in less than four hundred 
years. The first Spaniards described nothing that 
might properly be called a hat, but had much to say 
about kerchiefs or head cloths, usually called by their 
Tagalog name, potong. This appears to have been a 
band or fillet of some width which was wound around 
the head. Among the Bisaya, wealthy men sometimes 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 



125 




Fig. 29. Filipino Hats, o, Moro; 6, Tirurai c, Mandaya; d, Ilokano; e, Bikol; 
/, Bontok; g, Bisayan of Samar; h, Tinggian; i, Pampanga. 

edged them with gold. Ruder tribes who wore no 
potong dispensed wholly with head covering. This 
head cloth was a convenient way of conspicuously distin- 
guishing the brave. The red potong was put on only if 



126 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

one had killed a man. Embroidered borders are said to 
have been added after the warrior had slain seven 
human beings, and long loose cords or fringes were 
reserved for the specially valiant. The Sambal are said 
to have worn a special head cloth as a sign of mourning 
until they released themselves by killing a foe or 
stranger, much as the Bisaya cut their hair and ate no 
rice or cooked food after the death of a relative until 
they had obtained a similar absolution. The pagans of 
Mindanao follow analogous customs today: in place of 
the potong, they use a square kerchief, but among nearly 
all of them only he may wear a cloth dyed in a certain 
shade of red who has taken the necessary number of lives. 

This, then, is the native headdress which the hat has 
tended to replace as Christianity prevailed and the 
old customs of killing and head-hunting fell into disuse 
as social insignia. Under this view, the small hats of the 
interior tribes of Luzon become very interesting. Some 
of these groups remained wholly without contact with 
the Spaniards or at least sufficiently aloof to take 
nothing over from them directly. Their miniature hats 
accordingly would seem to represent a development of 
their own customs; which however occurred only after 
they had received the necessary stimulus through the 
example of their more affected neighbors. 

As to the head cloth, it is somewhat difficult to form 
a just historic appraisal. Mohammedanism is at once 
suggested. It is however entirely possible that the usage 
antedates the introduction of this faith. The connec- 
tion of the head cloth with martial prowess is of course 
not Mohammedan, but typically Malaysian. Customs 
of this type are in fact so deeply ingrained in the 
aboriginal culture of the East Indies that one would be 
inclined to look for a considerably greater antiquity of 
the potong than the period of the first introduction of 



128 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Mohammedanism would cover. All that can be said to 
the contrary is that, if the hat in little more than three 
hundred years came to be adopted almost universally 
without being associated with any such deeply rooted 
institution as head-hunting, it is conceivable that two 
centuries might have sufficed for the majority of tribes 
to have taken over the idea of the head cloth from the 
Mohammedan and fit it into their existent practices by 
connecting it with ideas of warlike distinction. Fashion 
in the narrower sense of the term undoubtedly plays and 
varies much more slowly among rude and semi-civilized 
peoples than among ourselves; but this conservatism 
or lack of imagination is compensated for by a much 
greater readiness to adopt fundamental changes in dress, 
particularly where these involve only additions to what 
is already in use. 

Women's Dress. For women, the fundamental 
dress in the Philippines is that which is prevalent not 
only throughout the East Indies, but in the warmer 
portions of Eastern Asia: the sarong or unsewn skirt. 
This is nothing but a piece of cloth wound several times 
about the waist, held up by having its upper edge tucked 
in, and falling to the knees, ankles, or somewhere 
between. This is still the woman's skirt wherever 
ancient usage is adhered to in the Philippines. Pagan 
tribes such as the Bagobo replace the sarong by the bag 
or tube-like skirt that is sewn together, and is invariably 
the result of contact with either Christians or Moham- 
medans. This is a far less beautiful garment, among a 
people whose art of dressmaking remains unrefined, 
than the sarong; because the latter falls naturally into 
folds and is capable of innumerable niceties of adjust- 
ment and draping. 

The Tagalog and Bisaya, as well as the Moro women 
at the time of discovery, had already added to the skirt 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 129 

a jacket quite similar to that of the men. It was in 
fact the same garment altered only in details. These 
ancient jackets appear to be well represented by thos« 
worn by Bagobo women today — possibly even to the 
elaborate shell bead decoration favored by the latter. 
The mountaineers of Luzon scarcely knew the article. 
The Nabaloi, Kankanai, Tinggian, Kalinga, and even 
Apayao and Ilongot women now wear it more or less 
regularly; but these tribes have maintained trade con- 
tacts with the Ilokano or other Christians, and the bare- 
breasted Ifugao and Bontok more probably represent 
the ancient custom of all the interior tribes. The 
modern Christian Filipina has given up the jacket and 
in most cases the sarong. Her dress differs somewhat 
from that of European women, but is basically of the 
same type and derived from it. 

Hair, Teeth, and Tattoo. The ancient Filipino 
man wore his hair long and his adherence to this custom 
is a very fair index of the degree of his civilization, or 
rather his subjugation to Christian influence. The unaf- 
fected pagan tribes still maintain the old practice. The 
Tagalog formerly let the hair flow to the shoulder, the 
Cagayan, like the neighboring Kalinga of today, 
allowed it to fall free as far as it would, and valued 
length as beauty. The Ilokano cut it somewhat; the 
Sambal shaved the front half of the head, but wore a 
great loose shock on the middle of the skull. A similar 
style is still adhered to by the Negrito Batak of Palawan. 
The Bisaya, according to some accounts, cut their hair 
somewhat shorter than any of the Luzon tribes; accord- 
ing to others, trimmed it in a sort of queue. Of the 
Mohammedans, the Yakan and Lanao Moros still wear 
their hair long. 

For women, the usual style was to leave the hair un- 
confined. Here also there were national fashions. 



130 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Tagalog ladies, for instance, wound their hair in a knot. 

The practice of tattooing has everywhere yielded 
before Christianity and Mohammedanism, but appears 
to have been nearly as general a custom as the habit of 
wearing the hair long, especially among the men; and 
is therefore a similar index of status of civilization. 
Tattooing is undoubtedly an ancient Malaysian institu- 
tion. Like the head cloth, it tends to be used as a 
means of indicating prowess. It is however clear that 
tattooing, long hair, and head-hunting tend very strongly 
to coexist and to go out of use together. Of the tribes 
now civilized, the Bisaya were by far the most given to 
tattooing, covering almost the entire body. So striking 
was their appearance, that for the first generation 
or two their customary name among the Spaniards was 
Pintados, 'Hhe painted ones." The Tagalog tattooed 
very much less. Of the Luzon tribes now civilized, the 
Ilokano seem to have been the most addicted to the 
practice, which agrees well with the strong hold which 
the custom still retains among the pagans adjacent to 
them. The tribes of Mindanao were much less inclined 
to tattoo than the Bisaya, in spite of their geographical 
proximity to them; and today follow the custom very 
sparingly. Mohammedan example is the probable 
cause. 

The Negrito has already been mentioned as scarifying 
his body instead of tattooing it, because the natural 
pigment in his skin is sufficient to prevent any intro- 
duced coloring matter from being conspicuous. 

The overwhelming majority of Philippine tribes 
agreed with their kinsmen of the East Indies in filing 
and blackening the teeth. The chief exception, other 
than the Negritos, is furnished by the mountaineers of 
Luzon. These do not follow the practice today, and 
appear not to have done so formerly. It is therefore 



THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 131 

likely that the custom never reached them, which would 
indicate that it did not form part of the most ancient 
stratum of culture in the islands. It fits with this view 
that the pagans of Mindanao, who have been more sub- 
ject to ancient outside influences in other respects, file 
their teeth, usually to points. Thirteenth century 
Chinese accounts speak of Negrito tribes with white 
teeth; which indicates that the more advanced coast 
dwellers were already blackening their teeth at that 
time. Both filing and blackening are at first extremely 
repellent to people not accustomed to the practice, but 
like other fashions are of course esteemed beautiful by 
the people who follow them. 



Chapter IV 
SOCIETY 

THE basic plan of Filipino society is one that 
dispenses wholly with constituted authority. 
Men of course differ in influence according to 
wealth, bravery, and wisdom; and the station in 
life they acquire tends strongly to be passed on 
to their sons by inheritance, particularly so far 
as it rests on the important factor of property. 
Authority over other men, however, is not trans- 
mitted, because such authority does not exist. In 
short, the primitive Filipino lacks totally the concept 
of the state which is so fundamental in all our thought 
about social groups. This does not mean that the 
Filipino lacks a system of law; in fact, as shown in a 
following section, he possesses a rather elaborate law 
and lives up to its theoretical justice to about the same 
degree as do we. These may seem contradictory state- 
ments. But they are so only from the point of view of 
our own civilization, which derives law from the state; 
whereas it is clear from the history of human culture 
that definitely regulatory law codes are in general far 
more ancient than definitely organized states. In fact, 
it would seem that the Fihpino's law is intricate and 
refined just in proportion as he has remained primi- 
tively non-political. His beginnings in the direction of 
state organization were made through the channel of 
kingship; and it is plain that autocracy, although it 
may coincide with law, can get along with a minimum 
thereof, whereas when every man is every man's equal, 
some generally accepted system of right and wrong must 
prevail or chaos ensue. The difference, then, between 
the primitive Filipino and ourselves is not at all in the 
respective absence and presence of law^ nor even so 



134 PEOPLES OP THE PHILIPPINES 

much in his lesser development thereof, as in the fact 
that the channels through which his law operates are 
distinctly non-political. 

The Bar angay Com munity. The Filipino thus 
follows in his community life a social grouping which we 
have largely replaced by a political one. Wherever he 
has remained primitive, the structural basis of his 
society is either the family of blood relatives or the 
harangay. In the main, these two plans coincide. The 
harangay is a group of people living in one locality and 
following one leader; they are either his kinsmen, his 
slaves, or his economic dependents. The basis of this 
unit seems to be the kin group, subsequently expanded 
by the inclusion of those who voluntarily or involun- 
tarily have come into more or less permanent relation 
with it. The harangay was the plan on which the 
majority of the coast dwellers who are now Christian 
were organized at the time of discovery. 

In the mountains of Luzon, the harangay is not so 
clearly defined, but actual conditions are not very 
different. As direct slavery is little developed, all in- 
dividuals in the community are nearly on a single level, 
adhering among one another largely in virtue of their 
degree of kinship. Inasmuch as relationship is reckoned 
equally in the male and female line, it is obvious that 
every person is a member, through his father and 
mother, of two kin groups; and of course of a larger 
number as he traces his descent farther back. If one of 
the several groups with which he is thus connected has 
its interests affected, he immediately acts with it. 
When the occasion has passed, he may the next time be 
called upon to join another group. If two groups clash 
with which he is about equally affiliated, he is likely to 
serve as intermediary, to use every effort to bring about 
a reconcilement, and in this way to preserve to a con- 



SOCIETY 135 

siderable extent cohesion within the community. With- 
in each group with which he thus from time to time acts, 
there is a recognized leader; the head, through his Ufe- 
time, of a family which theoretically is perpetual. He is 
the head because of superior competence; which in 
turn rests on distinguished wealth or bravery. Courage 
itself and fighting ability are of course not always trans- 
mitted from father to son, but wealth is; and inasmuch 
as the ability to fight successfully depends very largely 
on the possession of property, the leadership within the 
family group is quite normally directly hereditary. This 
is the plan of society under which the Ifugao, the 
Bontok, and to a greater or less degree all the pagans 
of Luzon live. 

The barangay system looks very much like an exten- 
sion of the mountaineers' plan of society. Wealth was 
probably more readily accumulated on the coast and 
thus afforded greater opportunity for its irregular dis- 
tribution and concentration in relatively fewer hands. 
This, in turn, encouraged slavery, which throughout the 
Philippines has always been largely the result of debt or 
economic causes. In these ways leadership became 
more pronounced. Once it became powerful enough 
for its recognition to transcend the bonds of immediate 
kinship, and was accepted over a district as such, no 
matter how small, the barangay plan was in force; and 
in a sense too, the beginnings of a political organization 
had been laid. From the point of view of development, 
however, the step from the anarchic mountain system 
to that of the barangay was a very short one. 

With all this first step, the lowland Filipino of three 
or four centuries ago had however reached only the germ 
of a political constitution of society. He never succeeded 
in welding the little local barangays into larger units. 
This was the reason the Spaniards succeeded so easily in 



136 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

subjugating the larger part of the islands with a force 
that at first sight must always seem inadequate. The 
head of each barangay acted for himself and his people 
with him. As an early observer puts it, each was intent 
on his own interests, even though they might be broth- 
ers. If one acquired supremacy, it was merely a mani- 
festation of superior ferocity and capacity in combat, 
either in his own person or that of his following. In that 
case his overlordship was to an extent recognized; but 
passed away as soon as his power fell to pieces with his 
death or from any other cause. The ancient political 
history of the Philippines was accordingly one endless 
succession of insults, jealousies, threats, murders, feuds, 
and reconciliations between the innumerable little 
barangays; without any unifications or consolidations 
ever occurring except of the most superficial and transi- 
tory kind. 

Indian civilization, probably because its source was 
remote and its transmission indirect, never affected 
Filipino society as it affected Filipino knowledge and 
thought; but yet it could scarcely have passed by 
without leaving some traces. The last and declining 
phase of this influence seems to have entered the 
Philippines chiefly from the south and to have carried 
with it, to as far as the Bisayan Islands, the name and 
possibly some glimmerings of the idea of kingship. 
Magellan found the chieftains of Cebu bearing the Indian 
title of rajah. And yet, their power does not appear to 
have been much greater than that of the barangay 
lords in Luzon. Statecraft as an enduring product 
never interested the Hindu very much. His claim to a 
high place in the history of civilization rests on his 
achievements in religion, philosophy, and literature. 
With such a type of culture first filtered through other 
channels and then seeping into an almost unorganized 



SOCIETY 137 

native society, one should not expect much result in the 
way of political upbuilding. 

Mohammedan Influences. With the Moham- 
medan it was different. From the time of the founder of 
his faith he has been accustomed to the idea of absolute 
rule on earth. So deeply ingrained is this crude but 
effective concept that it has always remained character- 
istic of Islam, and still keeps a powerful hold on its 
devotees. If the Hindu had introduced the name of 
kingship into the Philippines, the Mohammedan 
imported the fact. The Sultans of Sulu and of Magin- 
danao definitely attempted to rule as autocrats over 
large districts; and in some measure they succeeded. 
Of course, their fortunes were variable, since in the very 
nature of autocracy the degree of absolutism exercised 
depends to a preponderating extent on the individuality 
of the ruler. Living at the peripheries of the Moham- 
medan world, and among people whom Islam had there- 
fore affected less deeply than the majority of its converts, 
the Filipino sultans held somewhat less complete sway 
than many of their colleagues in other parts of the world. 
At least in plan, however, they held power by the same 
right and by the same means; and under them the 
various datos or local chiefs were in turn minor auto- 
crats. There is no question that this scheme of political 
organization gave the Mohammedans a military effi- 
ciency on a much larger scale than the other Filipinos 
possessed and was the cause which enabled them to 
preserve their independence for three hundred years 
after these had succumbed. In fact, their power was 
not broken until steam gunboats drove their fleets of 
light sailing vessels from the sea: and even then the 
suzerainty of Spain remained rather shadowy to the end. 

In deeper perspective, however, the fairly successful 
states achieved by the Mohammedans are character- 



138 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

istic of Mohammedan culture and not of the Fihpino. 
They represent a late and brief phase in the history of 
the islands, a phase which always remained essentially 
alien and affected only one end of the archipelago. 

The pagans of Mindanao did not wholly escape the in- 
fluence of Mohammedanism, although they retained 
their independence and native religion. Over most of 
the interior of this island, the dato both exercises 
greater power and maintains it over a larger area, than 
the family head among the mountaineers of Luzon. 
Here, then, a comparatively recent change has taken 
place. 

The conclusion is that the Bontok, Ifugao, and adja- 
cent tribes represent the original type of political society 
that once prevailed over all the Philippines. While the 
other nationalities have more or less altered politically, 
the causes and sequences of the development are clear. 
These causes were, in minor degree, economic progress; 
and prevailingly, the importation or example of foreign 
institutions. 

Social Classes. Under these alterations of political 
organization, Filipino society persisted with funda- 
mental continuity and very little change. Everywhere 
three strata of society were recognized. Those of the 
Ifugao — the wealthy, middle class, and poor — have 
already been mentioned. The same classes were 
established among the other pagans of Luzon. They 
existed also among the nationalities now Christian, 
although here their coloring was somewhat different. 
With the Tagalog and Bisaya, for instance, the rich were 
called the rulers; rank nominally superseded wealth; 
but actually the concentration of wealth was what made 
rank. 

The middle class had become the common people — 
in the language of the Spaniards, the plebeians. The 



SOCIETY 139 

poor were slaves, either by capture or through debt 
servitude. Even among the wildest pagans, economic 
obligations are transmitted undiminished from father 
to son. When the Tagalog converted such obligation 
into peonage, serfdom, and finally outright slavery, 
there was therefore no wrench to custom when slavery 
became heritable. 

Throughout the lowlands two classes of slaves were 
recognized: those who were absolute property and 
served in their master's house; and those who main- 
tained establishments and families of their own but 
were liable to constant service. Among the Tagalog, 
the former were known as sagigilid ''those at the 
margin," that is, at the fringe of society. The better 
situated slaves or namamahay, "those who live in 
their own house," possessed the right of compelling 
their master to free them on tendering to him their 
proper value, whereas the full slave might be manu- 
mitted by his owner, but could not exact his own re- 
lease. The value of a slave was put at ten taels of gold, 
or about eighty Spanish pesos, of a namamahay about 
half — very considerable amounts in view of the high 
value of money at the time and in so remote a region. 
For the Tagalog it is expressly stated that slaves con- 
stituted ''their greatest wealth and capital." That the 
institution of slavery was very deeply rooted among 
this people and the Bisaya, is shown by the fact that a 
slave might be divided between heirs. If the father was 
survived by two sons and but one slave, the latter served 
his two new masters alternately for equal periods. 
Somewhat similar was the arrangement which made the 
child of a slave and a free man a half slave who served 
his master for alternate moons. It is even stated that 
a child of such a half slave and a free person was 
reckoned a quarter slave. 



140 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

In Mindanao, the individual actually exercising 
sovereignty, no matter over how small a district, is the 
dato; whereas his sons, younger brothers, and collat- 
eral or lineal descendants of a former dato are timawa. 
Although not ruling, these are reckoned of the same 
nobility as the dato. The same system prevailed among 
the ancient Bisaya and Tagalog; except that here the 
term timawa was applied to the common mass of free 
people as opposed to slaves. The Bisaya named their 
ruling class dato and the Tagalog maginoo. 

It is very evident from all this that one trait is and 
has been shared by all Filipinos, no matter what their 
general condition of civilization: society is classified 
into horizontal strata, differing in rank, honor, power, 
and due. The idea of lineage is very strongly developed, 
and even the most primitive native makes every effort 
to maintain the position in the world which his fathers 
occupied and to transmit it unimpaired to his descend- 
ants. This feeling is intensified by the preservation of 
genealogies. An Ifugao or Bontok that amounts to 
anything at all can always recount his ancestors on the 
mother's as well as the father's side for five or six genera- 
tions back. Among the Christians this faculty has 
perhaps become somewhat stunted, but before their 
conversion peoples like the Tagalog and Bisaya seem 
to have kept record of their family trees to an even 
greater extent. In fact, writing was employed by them 
chiefly for this purpose, the genealogies, after a few 
generations, being embroidered with fanciful legends 
and ultimately merged into more or less mythical ac- 
counts and tales of the origin of the world. The Span- 
iards who alluded to these traditions unfortunately have 
not preserved them, but their type is familiar from 
Malaysia and Polynesia generally. Among the Philip- 
pine Mohammedans the same tendency persists, 



SOCIETY 141 

although the new rehgion has somewhat altered the 
form. The Moro sultans have genealogies that go back 
to the creation of the world, but the old native cos- 
mogonies have been replaced by lines of descent begin- 
ning with Adam and passing through Noah, Abraham, 
and Mohammed. The Moros preserve these genealogies, 
which are their only histories, in books written in Arabic 
characters. These records are demonstrably accurate 
for a considerable number of generations back from the 
present, and at least approximately authentic over a 
period of about five centuries. 

While society is so incisively divided into ranks, there 
is no trace in the Philippines of the principle of clans or 
exogamic or totemic groups. These two systems agree 
in being social classifications based on descent; they 
contrast fundamentally in that clans are not in essence 
subordinated in prestige or power but are regarded as 
equivalent units within the social fabric. It is true that 
references have occasionally been made which might 
seem construable as indicative of the existence of a clan 
scheme among some of the less advanced Filipinos. 
Thus the previously mentioned ato or smaller units with- 
in the Bontok towns might speculatively be construed 
relics of a clan organization: but they are not exogamic, 
and persons may change their ato affiliation. The Ifugao 
have been said to be organized into ''clans " ; but again, 
the characteristic features of a true clan system — 
exogamy, the reckoning of descent exclusively in either 
the male or the female line, totemism — are all absent. 
Therefore, it is extremely likely that the Ifugao "clans" 
are only the familiar barangay or something similar. 
There is no objection to denominating such units clans, 
provided it is clearly reaUzed that the groups are essen- 
tially the same as those existing among the other 



142 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Filipinos, and of a thoroughly different kind from the 
Australian and American groups to which the word 
clan is usually applied. 

Even if we had no farther evidence, it would be 
obvious from the general Filipino attitude as to kin- 
ship that the native could not well have developed a 
clan system without reconstituting his society. He 
reckons relationship and descent equally through the 
male and female lines : which plan and clan organization 
are in the nature of things mutually exclusive. 

The Filipino, in these matters of social constitution, 
aligns himself with all the nations related to him through 
the whole of the East Indies, Polynesia, and Micronesia 
— in other words, those parts of Oceania inhabited by 
brown peoples. Throughout these regions the clan 
idea is very little developed, and where it has taken root 
at all has normally proved abortive. It is only in the 
tracts inhabited by the black Australians, Papuans, and 
Melanesians, that there is found a luxuriance of the 
clan or vertical classification of society, as it might be 
called in distinction from the horizontal one of levels. 
And even among the blacks the concept of rank takes 
precedence in those very districts which are known to 
have been subjected to Malaysian or Polynesian influ- 
ence, namely, the greater part of Melanesia and the coast 
of New Guinea. The generic plan of social institu- 
tions among the Filipinos is therefore undoubtedly a 
very old one, inherited jointly by them and the adjacent 
brown-skinned nations from the time of their original 
community. 

The Sexes. The place of woman in Filipino society 
is a high one. Even where Islam has been accepted, 
she retains many of her old privileges, and the typical 
Mohammedan practices of seclusion, veiling, and sub- 
jection to her father or husband have made only little 



SOCIETY 143 

headway. Among all the pagans encountered by the 
Spaniards, or still remaining such, the native attitude 
may be defined as a complete freedom from any assump- 
tion that men and women differ in rank or otherwise 
than as nature provides in giving them different bodies. 
In short, the inevitable physiological differences are 
recognized, but they are not used as a starting point 
from which social distinctions or restrictions are de- 
veloped as by so many other nations. The Filipino 
may well be described as an unconscious and thorough- 
going feminist. 

Not only are descent and relationship reckoned 
equally through father and mother, or son and daughter, 
but the terms applied to kindred are normally identical. 
The Filipino says ''uncle" as we do, whereas many or 
most nations of similar cultural level distinguish care- 
fully between the father's brother and the mother's 
brother, as if a kinsman related to one through a woman 
must necessarily be a different kind of kinsman from 
him who is related through a male. Often, too, the cor- 
responding relatives of different sex are included under 
a single term by the Filipino : ajpo is neither grandfather 
nor grandmother but grandparent; only when the sex 
is specifically to be emphasized are words for ''man" 
and "woman" added. 

The division of labor has none of the hardened rigidity 
which most uncivilized peoples observe. Men of course 
do the fighting, hunting, carpentering, and all violent 
work. They also sit in council or rule, as the case may 
be. But this simply means that women are normally 
less fitted by nature and disposition than men to engage 
in certain pursuits; and most other activities are in- 
discriminately followed by both sexes, or only more 
inclined to by one than the other. An American Indian 
would stamp himself as unmanly and ridiculous if he 



144 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

carried water, fetched wood, or cooked while he pos- 
sessed any kinswomen; and his wife or daughter would 
feel and share in his disgrace. The Filipino takes turns 
with his wife tending the children and farming. If it is 
inconvenient for her to cook, he does so. He brings in 
the firewood. He does the heavier work of agriculture, 
while the more tedious occupations of transplanting and 
weeding rice generally fall to her. Often men and 
women go to their field labors together. Of course 
custom does considerably segregate the occupations of 
the sexes ; but rarely to the point of enforcing the sepa- 
ration under penalty of stigma. 

'' The "medium" who is the only priest or recognized 
religious officiator of the Filipino is, throughout the 
islands as a whole, as often a woman as a man. The 
Bisaya, Tagalog, Tinggian, and Subanun usually 
favored women for this office; men predominate 
among the Bontok, Ifugao, Bagobo, and Mandaya. 
No tribe excludes either sex. 

Marriage. Marriage is universally by purchase, 
and a dwelling together by man and woman without 
the bride price having been formally paid over is illegiti- 
mate and casts a shadow on the children as well as 
the couple. The transaction must be looked upon as 
an expression of respect, of publicly professed value, 
and as ensuring a foundation for the economic and 
therefore social well being of the descendants of the 
couple. The woman is far from being bartered about 
like a pig. The first advances of courtship frequently 
come from her. At the wedding she acts in total equality 
with the groom. They sit on the same mat or eat out of 
one dish as the cardinal symbolic act of the rite. 

Small children are often betrothed, especially among 
the well-to-do who lay stress on alliances suited to main- 
tain family dignity. In any event there is always a 



SOCIETY 145 

formal function, sometimes two, which precede the 
wedding itself and may be construed as official be- 
trothals. Should either party retract after these pre- 
liminaries, the other properly regards itself as insulted 
and lodges a claim for damages. The marriage act has 
a strong religious coloring. Sacrifices are offered and 
prayers or formulas recited to ensure the health, well 
being, and harmony of the couple and their offspring. 

Among the surviving pagans, those of Luzon, for 
instance the Ifugao, conduct engagements and mar- 
riages with somewhat more elaborate formality, and 
pay larger values for their brides, than the Bagobo and 
other inhabitants of Mindanao; but the difference is 
only one of degree. The principles on which marriage 
rests, and the nature of weddings, are common to both 
groups of tribes; and everything goes to show that the 
nationalities now Christian or Mohammedan formerly 
followed customs of the same type. *^ 

That the married woman's position is one of full 
equality is clear from the fact that she enjoys thorough 
economic independence. She inherits property from 
her parents to the same degree as her brothers or un- 
married sisters, and passes it on to her children without 
any claim upon it by her husband. He enjoys the use 
of her property, but only as trustee for the children, 
and without the right of selling it. Of course his own 
status corresponds. All possessions acquired by either 
husband or wife during marriage, other than through 
inheritance, are community property, upon which only 
the children of the couple, and not the respective kins- 
men of each of them, have any claim. In case of divorce, 
the community property is settled upon the children; 
if there are none, it is equally divided. It is difficult to 
imagine an attitude of more complete non-discrimina- 
tion between the sexes. 



146 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Under these conditions, marriage was naturally- 
single : always in theory, and in most cases in practice. 
Even where, as among the Tagalog and Kalinga, the 
wealthy sometimes took several wives, one was reckoned 
the lawful spouse. The others were more or less recog- 
nized concubines, and their children of lower rank. 
Among tribes that strenuously maintain their personal 
independence, such as the Ifugao, an attempt of a man 
to live with another woman inevitably leads to a com- 
pensatory claim against the husband and often to 
divorce. Real polygamy was introduced only by the 
Mohammedans; and even the Moros in their actual 
practices still adhere rather closely to the generic 
Filipino spirit. 

Divorce is easy and in no sense a disgrace. The 
dowry or bride price is returned, unless the husband is 
demonstrably at fault, in which case it is retained as 
compensation for the injury inflicted. Everything is 
restored as well as may be to the ante-nuptial status, 
and each party is free. Among many of the wild tribes 
most men and women change partners several times 
before settling down permanently with a congenial 
mate, and the ancient habit of the peoples now Christian 
seems to have been much the same. The Ifugao assess 
a fine called hudhud upon the spouse whose disposition 
or conduct is responsible for the dissolution of a mar- 
riage : this is in extinction of the mental anguish caused 
the innocent mate. A payment called gihu must be 
made by the widow before remarriage is permitted . Fail- 
ure to pay the gibu would be an affront to the deceased 
wife or husband and her or his kin. 

There is considerable tendency toward cousin mar- 
riage in the Philippines. The hero tales of the Tinggian 
are full of statements such as ''It is good for us to be 
married because we are relatives," and even first cousins 



SOCIETY 147 

unite in wedlock. The modern Tinggian absolutely 
bar such unions, and regard the marriage of second 
cousins as somewhat scandalous. The Ifugao are allowed 
to break the prohibition against the marriage of second 
or third cousins by making a payment; the Subanun 
do the same between those of the first degree. The 
Bontok forbid only first cousins. The Bisaya always 
tried to procure a wife closely connected in relationship. 
The Tagalog insisted less on this point, but according to 
Father Chirino both nationalities permitted the marriage 
not only of first cousins but of uncle and niece, although 
Colin, a century later, while alluding to the fondness for 
marriage with remoter kin, specifies these degrees as 
prohibited. It would seem that the most primitive 
tribes were the most rigorous, and that with the growth 
of wealth and distinctions of rank the bars had been 
gradually let down in order to consolidate family proper- 
ty and prestige as much as possible. It is however 
rather significant that even the wildest of the Filipino 
do not enforce the widely spread and absolute rule of 
many primitive peoples against wedlock with any 
person that is demonstrably akin. 

There is nowhere any distinction, in these matters, 
between cross and parallel cousins, that is, the children 
of brother and sister as contrasted with the children of 
brother and brother or sister and sister. This is what 
might be expected from the fact that the Filipino looks 
upon his relatives through males and through females as 
identical. Only the Subanun say that if the son of a 
brother wishes to marry the daughter of a sister, he 
must pay a heavier fine than other cousins. 

It may be added that restrictions on women before 
and after childbirth are of no great moment among the 
Filipinos, and even among the wilder tribes are as much 
hygienic in character as of the nature of taboos; and 



148 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

that adolescence ceremonies for girls — a distinctive 
feature of many primitive societies — have scarcely been 
reported. 

The general high status of woman recurs among all 
the Malaysians as well as the Polynesians. It has 
suffered chiefly in proportion as Hindu, Mohammedan, 
and European influences have been operative. The 
mental attitude which it involves must therefore be 
regarded as an ancient and highly typical characteristic 
of the culture of the brown races of the Pacific, whereas 
the black peoples of Oceania — Australians, Papuans, 
and Melanesians — tend to draw a much sharper line 
between men and women, to the social disadvantage of 
the latter. 

Law. Primitive Filipino law recognizes only re- 
lations between individuals and between groups of 
individuals united by blood, co-residence, or common 
interests. There are no offenses against the state, 
because there is no state. Every man is his own judge 
and executioner in all offenses committed against him- 
self or his immediate group; but custom defines rather 
rigorously and sometimes intricately what his just rights 
and liabilities are. 

In the case of the most serious offenses, such as killing 
and witchcraft, the only honorable recourse is to re- 
venge, and he who did not attempt to attain it would 
brand himself as cowardly or mean-spirited. All 
grievances not of the very first magnitude are however 
expected to be settled without violence. The injured 
party levies a fine upon the offender and utilizes every 
means of persuasion, appeal to a sense of justice, pres- 
sure, or threat to enforce its payment. The offender 
usually resists up to a certain point. To yield at once 
would be a confession of guilt, or at least an admission 
of weakness that might lead to future exactions. Some- 



SOCIETY 149 

times counter claims are advanced, and usually the 
amount of liability is contested. 

In minor cases the payment due may be settled in 
conference of the parties interested. Where the alleged 
offense is more serious, go-betweens are employed for a 
commission ; or the community at large, that is its older 
and more influential men, gathers and renders a deci- 
sion. Such a verdict, even if it cannot be enforced, 
puts the offender under the strain of resisting public 
sentiment. The Nabaloi have a recognized council of 
elders, the tongtong, which meets in such cases; and 
among the Tinggian the lakay or head man is prominent 
in the council. But the tribes farther removed from 
civilization and therefore presumably preserving in 
purer form the institutions of their ancestors — the 
Ifugao, for instance — settle all disputes without refer- 
ence to anyone but the parties interested and their 
kinsmen or representatives. In Mindanao, where Mo- 
hammedan example has raised the head man to the 
fairly influential position of dato even among some of 
the pagans, justice is more largely dispensed by this 
individual; but this is obviously not the aboriginal 
u^age. The Tagalog and other lowlanders were found 
by the Spaniards to be following much the same prac- 
tice, the chieftain retaining for himself a considerable 
part of whatever fine was paid over. Still, even among 
these people, councils for the purpose of conducting 
trials are reported, so that it seems that the head 
man's power was probably less in native opinion and 
practice than it appeared to the Spaniards. The 
foreigner naturally tends to construe new institutions in 
terms of his own. 

Laws of the Northern Pagans. Of course, the 
loose native system did not always result in full justice. 
The brave and the wealthy were in a position to exact un- 



150 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

due penalties from the weak and the poor, and to whittle 
even equitable claims down to a fraction. The Ifugao 
frankly recognize that the fine due a well-to-do man, or 
due by him, is greater than that which a middle class or 
poor person receives or pays. The penalties exacted are 
about twice as great for each successive class. When the 
offender and injured party are of different classes, the 
fine is normally a compromise; thus, the poor are liable 
to the rich and the rich to the poor for about the amount 
which one middle class man would pay to the other for 
the same offense. Between people distantly related in 
blood, claims are pressed less strenuously and small 
compensation is accepted. Among very near relatives, 
even the most serious offenses are entirely condoned. 

The first claim is of course normally against the 
actual offender, but his entire kin are ultimately liable 
in proportion to their degree of relationship. Where the 
criminal is one of the less influential persons of a group, 
the supposition is that he was acting at the instigation or 
at least with the cognizance of the head of the group, 
that is, its richest man; and the principal liability falls 
upon the latter. This supposition is probably well 
founded in the majority of cases. Thus the Ifugao dis- 
tinguish between the nungolat or principal, ''who was 
strong, "the one who plans or directs the offense, whether 
or not he takes an active part in its commission; the 
tombok, or thrower, who actually hurls the weapon 
and who stands in the second degree of liability and 
likelihood of being attacked in revenge; third, the 
"companions of him who was strong" who merely assist 
or accompany the criminal; and fourth, the montudol 
or shower, who gives information facilitating the com- 
mission of the offense without otherwise participating. 
While kinsmen are always liable to a greater or less 
degree, merely on account of the intrinsic relation in 



SOCIETY 151 

which they stand to the offender, and irrespective of 
their degree of participation, husband and wife are 
not reckoned as kin among the Ifugao, and in fact may 
be parties to suits against each other. 

Oaths are taken and witnesses heard, but when 
testimony is insufficient, recourse is had to ordeals, 
especially in minor cases, such as theft. Some form of 
trial by ordeal was at one time practised by every people 
in the Philippines and the pagans universally retain the 
institution. Almost invariably both parties were com- 
pelled to submit to the same test, such as plunging the 
hands into boiling water, handling or being touched with 
hot irons, and the like. In other cases, they threw eggs, 
sweet potatoes, or reed stalks at each other, the one hit 
being adjudged guilty. Sometimes the ordeal developed 
into a duel with lances. In other instances a wrestling 
match decided the issue, and so strong was the con- 
viction of the innocent contender that he usually was 
the victor even over an opponent who was physically 
stronger. 

The ordeals were always of a ceremonial nature and 
represent the same appeal from mundane to super- 
natural justice which characterized our own mediaeval 
ordeals. They possess a semi-civilized flavor rather 
out of keeping with the generally primitive attitude of 
the pagan Filipino. They are not practised in aboriginal 
America nor in certain outlying regions of the Old 
World, but prevail chiefly among those peoples of 
Europe, Africa, and Asia who are in the condition of 
culture that is sometimes described as barbarism. 
There is thus a considerable probability that the concept 
of the ordeal originated only once in the history of 
civilization at some point which cannot at present be 
determined, and spread from this center to those peoples 
of the three continents whose general level of civiliza- 



152 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

tion put them within range of accepting the institution. 
It seems rather hkely that the ordeal was introduced 
into the Philippines as part of the same cultural move- 
ment which imported the institutions of animal sacrifice 
and augury. 

Murder or assumed murder through sorcery are the 
most aggravated and perhaps the most frequent offenses 
with which native law deals. Intent is an important 
factor when life is lost. Witchcraft of course always 
impUes intent. Pure accident without negligence im- 
poses no hability in Ifugao eyes even if life is lost. 
Negligence without intent causes the imposition of a 
heavy fine. Where the killing is wilful, the Ifugao 
never accepts blood money, since this would stamp him 
as a person without honor. This is the general theory of 
all tribes: the debt of life must be paid in blood. But 
in more settled communities, there is a manifest inclina- 
tion to facilitate the acceptance of property settlements, 
especially after a feud threatens to go on perpetually 
without marked advantage to either side. Fine dis- 
tinctions are sometimes made as to carelessness and 
intent. An Ifugao, knowing that his own life is being 
sought, may hurl a spear out of his house in the direction 
of a noise that he hears at night and slay a peaceful 
neighbor. Criminal intent being lacking, he is not 
liable to the death penalty; but negligence being ob- 
vious in that he did not first make sure of the identity 
of his victim, he is liable to a heavy fine. 

The offense next in severity and perhaps in frequency 
among the same people is adultery, for which the 
penalty is also large. The bulk of the fine goes to the 
offended spouse, the remainder to his or her kin. The 
co-respondent is as fully liable as the delinquent spouse : 
an injured wife for instance, receives payment from 
both. A guilty man is somewhat doubtfully subject to 



SOCIETY 153 

the death penalty provided this is inflicted immediately 
by the aggrieved husband, who can then aver the justi- 
fied heat of passion. 

Theft is a distinctly subordinate offense and less 
frequent than denial or evasion of debts. In the latter 
case, the aggrieved Ifugao is entitled to seize an equiva- 
lent from the offender's property. He must however 
do so openly, and if the owner is absent leave behind him 
his bolo or some other article that will establish his 
identity. Should he fail to do so, he himself is commit- 
ting theft. In case the thief or offender liable to a pay- 
ment is distant and cannot be reached, it is justifiable 
to appropriate the amount of the claim from the prop- 
erty of any member of his community. The seizure is 
then held as a pawn until its owner redeems it with the 
proper fine, which he has exacted from his delinquent 
co-resident. Of course, this theory does not always work 
out, and sometimes leads to fresh litigation and con- 
flicts; but it evidences a considerable sense of legal 
equity as well as a highly developed feeling for property. 

The Filipino is extremely proud and sensitive, and his 
law protects him against moral and mental affronts even 
when no physical violence has been used and no property 
damaged. The Ifugao admits fines for slander, threats 
of violence, false accusation of crime, the employment of 
abusive or indecent language, and insults reflecting on 
honor, prestige, or rank. Among the tribes that accen- 
tuated differences in social standing and whose com- 
munities were presided over by a recognized chief, even 
heavier penalties attached to offenses of this character. 

Codes of Other Tribes. The Subanun of Min- 
danao have theoretically accepted Mohammedan control 
of their justice, but have kept most of the provisions 
of their ancient law, so that it still rests essentially 
on the same foundation as the Ifugao code. The 



154 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

greatest difference is that the trials are formally con- 
ducted by the dato or a group of head men instead of go- 
betweens acting for the principals; and that one-half 
of the penalties paid go to the judge. Personal revenge 
bei]ig illegal, the life of offenders is rarely taken, even 
murder being condoned for by the bangun or blood 
money. Adultery brings a heavy fine, and even im- 
proper advances impose some liability. A husband is 
privileged to wound a wife on discovering her infidelity. 
Should he kill her, he is subject to fine. After the first 
outburst he is not allowed to do her any bodily injury. 
For theft, the penalty is two or three times the value of 
the stolen article. Heavier fines attached to the rich 
than to the poor for the same offense. If a fine cannot 
be paid, the debtor becomes a temporary slave. He is 
not usually held longer than three years, except when 
the offense is adultery. 

Among the ancient Pampanga, it was usual for com- 
munities to go to war if a chieftain or noble was slain. 
In time, however, such feuds were patched up, from 
seventy to one hundred taels of gold being paid for the 
original murder. One-half of this amount went to the 
bereaved children, the remainder to his kinsmen, less a 
commission to the chiefs of other communities or kin 
groups who effected the settlement. For the slaying 
of a common man by one of the nobility, the fine was 
ten to twenty taels, but in default of direct heirs of the 
victim, the amount was distributed largely among the 
nobility participating in the settlement. If a common 
man slew one of the nobility, he and his family were put 
to death. For murder among the common people, a 
fine was assessed, in default of which the offender was 
hanged or lanced. For the killing of a near kinsman, 
the death penalty was not inflicted. Theft required 
restitution plus a fine. A thief unable to pay was sold as 



SOCIETY 155 

a slave to another district. Arson of dwellings or crops 
was a serious offense which even members of the nobility 
must compensate for in full, whereas common people 
were executed, and their goods and if necessary, their 
wives and children seized . ' ' Insulting words caused great 
anger" and were considered a very grave offense. The 
culprits were fined in heavy sums ''in order not to 
cause murders." Naturally, the common people might 
offend the nobility very much more poignantly than 
the latter had it in their power to violate the duller 
sensibilities of plebeians. When one chief insulted an- 
other, a decision was rendered by a still greater one, or 
by several of equal rank. If the offender was unwilling 
to submit to such judgment, he was at liberty to try to 
outdo his rival by lavishing greater expense on ceremon- 
ial festivals, he who succeeded in spending the larger 
sums being thereby accounted the more honorable. 

The Moros of Magindanao and the Sulu possessed 
written codes translated into native dialects from old 
Arabic law. This law is Mohammedan in character, 
being based on the Koran and commentaries thereof, 
except for a few modifications in the direction of an- 
cient native custom. No Hindu code seems ever to 
have reached the Philippines. 

Economic Life. Property occupies a very large 
part of the Filipino's thought. This is manifest from the 
importance which it has in law as well as from its 
determining effect on social standing. Certainly the 
contrast is great between the Filipino and the American 
Indian who generally professed to hold property in light 
esteem and readily lavished it in opportunities of 
ostentatious liberality. In the Philippines, the attitude 
of the civilized and uncivilized peoples toward wealth 
is much the same. The latter are generally poorer, but 
if anything more attached to their possessions. 



156 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Since the economic practices of the Christian tribes 
have become somewhat altered in conformity with 
European standards, and those of the wild tribes of 
Mindanao and of the Negritos are very imperfectly 
known, the best picture of the native life in this aspect 
is preserved by the pagans of Luzon. The Ifugao distin- 
guish two kinds of property : purely personal belongings 
which can be disposed of at will, and second, property 
normally obtained by inheritance and therefore looked 
upon as being essentially owned by the family or lineage. 
This the individual holds much in the capacity of 
trustee. When such property is sold, a ceremonial 
known as ibuy must be made, and the agents and wit- 
nesses to the transfer receive commissions or at least 
presents definitely regulated by custom. One value of 
the ibuy obviously is that it makes a public record of 
the transfer. 

The Ifugao is constantly going into debt. Sickness 
frequently makes necessary the purchase of animals 
required for the sacrifices which alone are believed 
capable of inducing recovery from illness. A death 
involves an elaborate feast for all who attend the 
funeral. Other occasions require expenditures which 
must be made from loans if available property is in- 
sufficient. The borrower often pledges a rice field or 
other valuables as collateral. Such a pawn is called 
balal. If a field is pledged, it can be held by the lender 
until full repayment is made; but it does not become his 
property even after two and three generations. Col- 
lateral is often repledged to another lender, and such 
procedure is regarded as legitimate, provided each suc- 
ceeding loan is smaller than the first one. Death in no 
case extinguishes a debt. 

Interest is known as lupe and is enormously high : the 
normal rate is one hundred percent for a year or any 



SOCIETY 157 

shorter period. A poor family running short of food 
may borrow rice a month before the harvest; they re- 
pay double the quantity a few weeks later. The debt 
doubles each succeeding year. Naturally, if the bor- 
rower does not soon pay off, he can liquidate only by 
handing over a field or some other article of considerable 
value. Frequently the patang is exacted — a partial 
advance payment of interest — almost a discount. 

Every agent receives a fee whether his services be 
rendered in a commercial transaction, the adjustment of 
a fine, or involve outright labor. 

Rice fields are rented on a basis of one-half of the crop 
to the landlord; he usually furnishes also one-half of 
the seed, but this is repaid to him doubly from the 
tenant's share. The latter performs all labor and 
provides the animals for the sacrifices needed to ensure 
a successful yield. 

Rich men, not only among the Ifugao, but among 
other mountain tribes, are expected at intervals to give 
great festivals of a semi-religious character. Besides 
being an occasion for feasting and merriment, these are 
believed to contribute to the general welfare of the 
community. Men of substance who failed to make 
these ceremonies — at which great quantities of animals 
are sacrificed and eaten — would lose caste. The Ifugao 
call such ceremonies honga and uyauwe; the Kankanai, 
humayas, mandit, and hegnas; the Nabaloi, pachit. 

Rice fields constitute the greatest single item of Ifugao 
wealth and on the average make up probably nearly one- 
half of the property owned. Their value runs from 250 
to 800 pesos per acre, according to locality. The hold- 
ings however are small. At Kiangan about one family 
out of twelve possesses no rice land whatever; only one- 
fifth own two acres or more; and the total holdings of 
the wealthiest individual are twelve acres. When a 



158 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

field is sold, nearly twice the stipulated price is actually 
paid, the additions consisting in part of lukbu or fees to 
witnesses and agents, and in part of gifts to the kin of 
the seller. The latter receive about one-half as much as 
the amount paid over to the owner, and the witnesses 
about one-quarter. 

Similar economic conditions prevail among the Bon- 
tok. A field containing six thousand square feet is 
valued at two buffaloes or a hundred pesos. This is 
about seven hundred pesos per acre. If the field is 
rented, the landlord receives one-third of the crop. The 
gross yield, under his own cultivation, is about ten 
percent of the value of the field. The richest man in 
Bontok pueblo owns thirteen fields worth something 
over three thousand pesos. His personal property, 
consisting of buffaloes, pigs, stored rice, ornaments, and 
heirlooms, brings his total wealth to about ten thousand 
pesos. Wages are exceptionally low, averaging five 
centavos a day. As a fowl is worth ten times as much, 
and a pig averages perhaps eight pesos, it is obvious 
that even bare subsistence on the wage alone would be 
quite impossible. As a matter of fact, the laborer re- 
ceives his food in addition to the wage. 

The minuteness with which these head-hunting 
mountaineers value everything, even to immaterial 
possessions or privileges, is really remarkable. The 
appended list of Ifugao appraisals is representative. 
It is clear that the economic development of the native 
had far outstripped his technical, social, political, and 
intellectual progress. 

While the valuations are here given in pesos ar Ameri- 
can half dollars, the actual basis of reckoning, both 
among the Bontok and the Ifugao, is the handful of 
rice in the stalk the Spanish, manojo. The Bontok call 
this^n^e; the Ifugao, botek. Its value among the latter 



SOCIETY 



159 



is two and a half centavos, except during the half year 
immediately preceding the harvest, when it doubles. 
Small payments are frequently made in this rice cur- 
rency; larger ones are figured in it or in pigs or buffaloes. 
The result of all of the many negotiations, sales, and 
loans is that even the primitive Filipino has acquired 
an unusual sense of numbers and great versatility in the 
use of figures. Arithmetical operations are however 
mental or performed with counters, and no system of 
numeral notation has been reported. 



Economic Valuations Among the Ifugao 

Pesos. 

Rice fields with water rights, per acre 250-800 

Sweet potato fields no value 

Coconut palm (without land) 5 

Areca palm (without land) . 50 

Slave . 100 

Buffalo 50-80 

Pig 2.50-30 

Fowl . 25-1 
Commission for buying and bringing buffalo from Christian 

districts 10 

Bronze gongs 8-250 

Gold neck ornaments (intrinsic value of metal about one-sixth) 60-120 

Strings of agate beads 250 

Jars for rice wine 60-400 
Damages varying according to wealth of the parties involved 

False Accusation 10-35 

Curse "may you die" 10-35 

Adultery committed after preliminary marriage ceremony 5-20 

after second ceremony 12-50 

after final ceremony 25-100 

with aggravation or insult (hokwit) 50-200 

Wounding 80 

plus cost of ceremonies for recovery and reconciliation 100 

Attempts to involve as an accomplice in a killing 50-150 

Homicide, varied but little according to rank or wealth 1000 



160 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Trade. As might be expected, trade is consider- 
ably developed. The pagan tribes do not transport very 
far; but articles that are sought after are frequently 
/ passed through a succession of groups. Manufactured 
/ articles as well as raw materials form the objects of this 
commerce. Frequently a particular industry is special- 
ized at a given point, which then supplies a considerable 
district with its ware. Thus, in the region of Bontok, 
Samoki district makes and exports pottery; Baliwang, 
steel head-axes; Agawa, brass pipes; Sagada, cloth. 
In the same way, Barlig trades rattan, resin, and wax to 
other communities ; Mayinit, salt ; Tinglayan, tobacco ; 
Suyok, gold. In these last cases natural supply is 
obviously the determining factor; but the localization 
of industries appears to be rather a matter of custom. 
This condition is so definitely stabilized as to lend 
a strangely civilized flavor to the industrial life of these 
otherwise so primitive tribes. 

War. With all his gentleness of manner, the Fili- 
pino, like other East Indians, must be accounted a man 
of courage. He holds human life cheaply, and often 
his own as well as that of others. If his bravery on 
occasion melts into panic, such is the almost inevitable 
outcome of undisciplined combat. His failure over most 
of the islands to maintain his independence against the 
Spaniard is proof only of the inefficiency of his political 
organization: the Moros, who as already mentioned 
were consolidated into kingdoms and subkingdoms 
instead of divided by innumerable feuds, thereby pre- 
served their freedom much longer. 

Fighting was a chronic act of Philippine society, and 
the man lacking in personal courage enjoyed but the 
slightest esteem, whatever his hereditary station in life. 
But the endless conflicts scarcely ever rose to the dignity 
of wars, because of inability of the local groups to form 



SOCIETY 161 

themselves into larger units. Among the tribes of the 
interior, even communities often failed to act as groups in 
a conflict, and many of the combats were restricted to 
families. This was particularly the case among groups 
like the Ifugao who recognize no head men, and who, 
when peaceable adjustment fails, have no recourse but 
to take up arms. In such event, the contest is likely 
to be confined to the kinsmen or immediate adherents 
of those who have received or inflicted the original 
injury. In the strict sense of the term, then, warfare can 
scarcely be said to be practised by the modern pagans, 
who rather alternate between living in a state of peace 
and one of vendetta. To a considerable extent this was 
also the condition of the Christian tribes at the time of 
discovery. 

Head=Huntingand the Debtof Life. The most 
striking feature of this side of native life was the practice 
of head-hunting, in which the less settled Filipinos en- 
gaged with the same ardor as the tribes of Borneo and 
the other East Indies. All through Malaysia it appears 
to have been an immemorial custom to decapitate the 
fallen foe and bring his head home for triumphal dis- 
play. A ritual celebration followed. Often, in fact, the 
feeling was strong that an important ceremony could 
not be successfully conducted without at least one 
fresh head, and a party would be organized to provide 
this requisite for the proper carrying out of what religion 
ordained. Many tribes kept either the head or the skull 
permanently hanging inside the house or on its front. 
The Bontok buried the skull, but used the jaw as a gong 
handle. The more heads a warrior brought home, the 
greater was his renown, and the more influential his 
standing in the community. As civilization gradually 
advanced in Malaysia, and Indian and Arabic points 
of view came more and more to be adopted, the crudity 



162 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

of this primitive practice seems to have been recognized 
as unnecessary or even objectionable, and head-hunting 
as such fell into disuse. In religion, the custom of formal 
human sacrifice partially took its place; and as for a 
man's reputation, it was no longer felt necessary for him 
to display the physical proofs of his success in combat. 
The knowledge that he had slain so and so many 
enemies sufficed. But with all this comparative refine- 
ment of custom, the ancient attitude continued to be 
adhered to. The Javanese and Mohammedanized 
Malay have long ago ceased head-hunting; but the 
more primitive tribes, particularly of interior Borneo 
and Sumatra, still hold to the practice. 

The same stages of development can be traced in the 
Philippines. All through northern Luzon, even along 
the coastS; the Spaniards found head-hunting in vogue. 
The Sambal, Ilokano, and Cagayan have long since 
given up the custom. The Tinggian and the Nabaloi 
have also discontinued the practice, but recollections 
of it remain in their traditions as well as in their ritual. 
The Apayao, Kalinga, Bontok, and Ifugao were still 
taking one another's heads with undiminished interest 
when the American appeared in the islands, and firm 
pressure was required to induce them to abandon the 
practice. In fact it is only in the last dozen years that 
the custom has been generally stamped out ; and in the 
remotest districts it is probably still followed when 
opportunity offers. 

The Tagalog and Bisaya of old, like the modern 
Manobo, Mandaya, and Bagobo, and the Mohammedan 
groups, having come more fully under native civilizing 
influences, were no longer taking heads when the 
Spaniards came among them. Now and then they col- 
lected the ears of the dead or clipped their hair for tassels 
to their garments. In the main, however, each man 



SOCIETY 163 

merely kept count of the number of his human victims, 
and instead of displaying skulls, wore a red headband 
whose shade or decoration published his bloody suc- 
cesses. In the southern districts, the persons entitled 
to these insignia were known as magani or bagani. 
The number of victims which a chief of unusual ferocity 
claimed often ran up to fifty or a hundred. In the 
mountains of Mindanao as well as among the Moros 
there still are men living who can boast of such totals. 
A common man rarely attained to such high distinc- 
tion. It was the chief who had the backing of fol- 
lowers; who led when the occasion was favorable; and 
who when peace seemed advisable was in a position to 
purchase it by the payment of blood money. Theoreti- 
cally, however, the honor of becoming a magani was 
not restricted to any social class, but depended wholly 
on a man's individual courage and skill in the use of 
weapons. 

In general, the native attitude is that one violent 
death calls for another. In the pursuit of this endeavor 
the balance is often exceeded, and thus instigates fresh 
reprisals which may go on for generations. This is the 
principle of what the native calls the "debt of life." 
It is to him also a debt of honor. Other injuries are 
readily compoundable, if sufficient payment is tendered; 
but he who quickly accepts blood money, thereby signi- 
fies himself a coward. The consequence is that blood 
money is as a rule taken only when intent to kill has 
been lacking, or when a chief's authority is sufficient 
to enforce a settlement. Where this is the case, blood 
feuds within the community tend to become rare because 
of the head man's interests. He not only receives for 
himself part of the fine that he imposes, but can best 
maintain his own authority toward neighbors and 
strangers with an undivided following at his back. 



164 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

The principle of a fair fight has no meaning to the 
Fihpino. That he possesses a strong sense of justice is 
evident not only from his well-defined codes of law, but 
from his general conduct. But once hostilities begin, 
no quarter is given. The method of slaying is im- 
material as long as the end is attained. Most attacks are 
made from ambush, and as readily upon the aged or 
women and children as on fighting men. Among the 
head-hunting tribes no distinction is drawn between 
skulls of warriors and those of non-combatants, and the 
attitude of the more southerly magani is the same. 
Often too, once the fighting spirit is roused, little differ- 
ence is made between the enemy proper and those even 
remotely associated with him by co-residence in the 
same region. All the emotional tensity of the East 
Indian which he so carefully represses in his daily 
conduct flares up as soon as he draws his kris. 

The connection between head-hunting and human 
sacrifice appears to be pretty well established for the 
Philippines by the fact that the two practices were very 
nearly mutually exclusive. The northern nationalities 
preferred head-taking, the central and southern ones 
sacrifice, but few, if any, followed both customs, and not 
one, with the exception of the Mohammedans, had 
reached the point of abandoning both. 

Weapons. The prevailing weapons were the spear 
and the sword, the latter being replaced in parts of the 
head-hunting area of northern Luzon by the battle ax. 
In this matter also tribal bent was definite. A group 
that used the ax employed it consistently and had no 
swords, and vice versa. The ax cannot be said to be the 
earlier form; but it is that which prevailed among the 
more primitive tribes possessing least iron and least 
ability in its manufacture. The various forms of swords 
have already been described. 



SOCIETY 165 

The spear in its most ancient form was tipped with 
bamboo; but wherever iron was sufficiently abundant, 
the point was replaced by one of that material. 

Bows and Blowguns. The bow is often spoken of 
as if it were the weapon distinctive of the Negrito. It 
is true that the little black man chiefly relies upon the 
bow; but he is timid and a hunter rather than a 
fighter. It by no means follows that because he made 
much use of it, the brown Filipino did not own the 
weapon. As a matter of fact, the bow and arrow enjoy 
very much wider use in the Philippines than it is gener- 
ally alleged. Artieda in 1576, speaking generally or of 
the central islands, describes large bows more powerful 
than those of the English archers; and Chirino and 
Morga, but little later, refer to the use of bows in some 
provinces, including certain of the Tagalog districts. 
The Sambal, until their subjugation, were famous for 
their skill with the weapon. Among the pagans of 
Luzon, the Tinggian as well as the Ilongot constantly 
use the bow and arrow; and the intervening tribes, such 
as the Bontok, retain it in the form of a child's toy. 
The Nabaloi and Kankanai were shooting when the 
Spaniards first came among them. At the opposite 
end of the archipelago nearly all the uncivilized peoples 
of Mindanao use arrows for hunting as well as warfare. 
The Mangyan of Mindoro are in the same class. More- 
over, the word for bow which recurs in almost every 
Filipino dialect is a form of the generic root word com- 
mon to all the Malay o-Polynesian languages. 

It is thus probable that the bow was once as widely 
diffused among the brown as among the black peoples. 
The hunting tribes were forced to cling to its employ- 
ment, and scarcely learned other weapons. Those, 
on the other hand, that came to depend upon agriculture, 
and these in time formed the majority, had less reason 



166 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



d 



Fig. 31. Propulsive Weapons: a, Negrito Bow of Palm Wood; 6, Negrito Arrow 
with Iron Point ; c, Manobo Bow of Bamboo ; d, Bagobo Arrow with Wooden Head ; 
e, Tagbanua Blowgun Dart.s in Case: /, Tirurai Quiver, plaited. 



SOCIETY 167 

for conservatism, and among them the spear became 
estabhshed as a weapon of warfare. As iron was 
introduced, the spear gained in reUabiHty. Fighting 
now being at closer range, the sword or ax became of still 
greater value; and in proportion as these tendencies 
developed and the new weapons improved, the bow was 
relegated to special purposes, and in some instances fell 
almost wholly into disuse. In other words, its history 
may be inferred to have stood in directly inverse relation 
to that of the iron industry. The arrow can be but little 
improved by the use of steel, and the bow not at all; 
whereas the lance gains greatly, and the sword and ax 
become practicable weapons only when they are made of 
metal. 

With the comparative importance of iron in all native 
life, it might therefore be expected that even where the 
bow had been retained it would be a weapon of no very 
high quality. On the whole this is the fact. It is always 
a simple self bow, made usually from the wood of the 
palma brava or even of bamboo; is lacking in backing 
or other reinforcement; and the cord is often of rattan 
or other vegetable fiber instead of that best of all bow- 
string materials — sinew. The weapon is long and nar- 
row ; among the Negrito it usually exceeds the height of 
the archer. The arrow is also long, often unfeathered, 
and rarely provided with other than a hard wooden 
point. Often the head is detachable, but has a cord 
affixed and thus really becomes a light harpoon for 
shooting. The strength of Filipino bows is usually not 
very great. Even those made by the Negrito fall con- 
siderably below their reputation. The arrow release 
of the blacks seems always to be the Mediterranean 
one : the cord is drawn with the tips of the middle three 
fingers, the nock of the arrow coming below the 
index. 



168 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



The same writers who have dwelled on the bow as the 
Negrito weapon, have sometimes regarded the blowgun 
as typically Malayan. This may be partly true, but is 
certainly not wholly so, since in Palawan the brown- 
skinned Tagbanua and Negrito Batak both use the 
weapon. It is known also to the Bagobo and the Yakan 
Moro; and at the period of discovery 
seems to have been used more or less 
generally by the Mindanao tribes, the 
Bisaya, and perhaps the Tagalog; often 
with poisoned darts. It is therefore by 
no means clear to which culture stratum 
the weapon is to be attributed. It does 
not seem to be found in northern Luzon. 
Shields. The principal defensive 
weapon is the shield, which is made in 
three forms that appear to represent as 
many culture types. 

The simplest and presumably earliest 
of these types, which is also the most 
common in Borneo, is a rectangular 
board sloping somewhat from its middle 
line toward both the long edges. Seen 
from the end the shape is therefore that 
of a low gabled roof. A boss is either 
absent or is a mere thickening of the 
ridge down the middle. At the present 
time this type of shield is known only 
from northern Luzon, where its most 
extreme form is attained among the 
Tinggian and Kalinga. With these 
tribes it is fashioned into three long 
prongs above and two below. The solid portion is 
comparatively small, and the weapon is obviously one 
for parrying rather than receiving missiles. It has even 



Fig. 32. Roof- 
Shaped Northern 
Type of Rectangu- 
lar Shield with Ex- 
aggerated Prongs. 
Kalinga. 



SOCIETY 



169 



an offensive purpose. In combat, the endeavor is often 
made to suddenly thrust the three prongs of the upper 
end against the opponent's legs and with a quick twist 
trip him up. As soon as he falls, the two prongs at the 
opposite end are jammed over his neck, pinning his 
head to the ground and allowing his easy decapitation. 

Among the Bontok and Nabaloi, 
the prongs persist, but have be- 
come so short and blunt as to 
leave only shallow scallops be- 
tween them which can serve no 
practical purpose, and are ob- 
viously decorative. The Ifugao 
has not even the scallops, but 
uses a plain rectangular shield. 
The Apayao shield has a single 
prong at each end. These pro- 
ject like long spines from the 
middle ridge of the body of the 
shield. 

The second type prevails in 
Mindanao, but must once have 
had a wider distribution, as is 
shown by the fact that it recurs, 
at least with its principal feat- 
ures, among the Negritos of Zambales and the Ilongot 
of Luzon. The general form of this shield is also 
rectangular. But the long edges are usually scalloped; 
the ridge is wanting; instead, there is a tendency for 
the length to be convex; the boss is invariably round. 
There is considerable inclination to fringe or tassel the 
edges of the weapon; and some tribes, such as the 
Bagobo, ornament it with elaborate carvings. Many of 
these features recur in certain shields both of Borneo 
and Celebes. It is therefore probable that as between 




Fig. 33. Southern Type of 
Rectangular Shield with Scal- 
loped Sides and Fringes. Bagobo. 



170 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



this type and the preceding we are dealing with two 
forms rather widely diffused in the East Indies, and not 
with mere local developments on Philippine soil. Which 

of the two types is the 
earlier is not quite cer- 
tain ; but the indication 
is that the order of 
development was as 
here given. 

The third type is of 
entirely different shape, 
being a round target. 
This shield is in use 
among the Moros and 
is almost certainly of 
Mohammedan intro- 
duction. In fact there 
be little doubt 




Fig. 34. Circular Type of Shield used by 
Mohammedans. Samal Moro. 



can 



that it is a direct 
Islamic importation from Asia, where the mediaeval 
Saracen and the Persian and the Hindu have long used 
circular bucklers. It is however illuminative of the 
culture history of the Philippines that the Moro, while 
he adopted the idea of the round shield from more 
advanced nations, made it over in his own material 
and therefore in degenerate form. The Asiatic round 
shield was evolved in leather and metal, but the Filipino, 
when he took it over, fell back on wood. 

Armor and Firearms. Body armor and helmets 
were known, but have never been used to any great 
extent. Rattan helmets such as are worn in Borneo 
have not been reported from the Philippines. The early 
Spaniards mentioned body armor made of rattan or 
cotton quilting — like that worn by the modern Manobo 
— and corselets of hard black wood. The latter were 





-^^4s«^iSSii^^ 



Fig. 35 Moro Brass Helmet imitated from an An- 
cient Spanish Style; and Moro Body Armor of Buffalo 
Horn Plates and Brass Links. 

171 



SOCIETY 173 

evidently sleeveless coats of slabs flexibly linked. 
Similar armor is still sometimes made by the Moros of 
plates of brass or buffalo horn joined by brass rings. 
In spite of its weight, it unquestionably affords much 
protection against swords and spears, but would be 
useless against firearms. 

The Moro also now and then make a brass helmet 
that appears to be neither of Hindu nor Arabic type, but 
an imitation of the helmets which were worn by the 
Spaniards who first invaded the archipelago. It is an 
interesting example of a local persistence of fashion 
among a half civilized people. 

Firearms had come into the Moro districts of the 
Philippines along with Mohammedanism. Guns in 
our sense of the word seem to have been unknown; but 
every chief of consequence boasted some culverins or 
small bronze cannons. These were set on the sultans' 
forts or stockades, and sometimes on war vessels. All 
these pieces were small, two men usually sufficing for 
their transport, and mounted on a simple swivel pin. 
The bore was small, not exceeding an inch or two ; and 
gunpowder both scarce and of poor quality. The 
Spaniards however praised the quality of workmanship 
of some of these little cannon, which they believed to 
have been imported from China. This may have been 
the case; but the Mohammedans of other parts of the 
East Indies had used this light artillery for a century or 
two before, and most of the pieces in use by the Philip- 
pine Moros are likely to have been made by Malays. 
They were not only employed in warfare, but valued as 
treasures, their esteem among the Moros being similar 
to that which gongs and Chinese jars enjoyed among the 
pagans. 



Chapter V 
RELIGION 

Spirits and Gods. The idea that dominates all 
Filipino religion is the belief in a class of supernatural 
beings called anito. This term is hard to translate; 
because it includes gods or divinities proper; evil or 
beneficent spirits of lower rank; and finally the souls of 
dead human beings. An anito is therefore any being 
which possesses the intelligence of a human person and 
equal or superior faculties, but lacks a corporeal body. 
The word is of widespread use in the East Indies and 
Oceania, and the concept of the anito is undoubtedly 
an extremely ancient one in this part of the world. Its 
particular meaning varies somewhat from tribe to tribe 
in the Philippines, some groups thinking rather of gods 
and spirits, and others primarily of the souls of dead 
human beings, when they use the term. The Bisaya 
and peoples of Mindanao generally replace anito by the 
Sanskrit term diwata when they refer to a deity or to 
any supernatural being that has never had a human 
existence. Anito is however the generic term in 
Tagalog and in a number of other languages, and has 
become well established in European usage. Some of the 
Spaniards have gone so far as to describe Filipino 
religion in general as being a system of aniteria. 

It is significant that the Filipino classes good and 
evil spirits together as anito just as he does not essen- 
tially distinguish between the great named gods and the 
lesser spirits which he recognizes only as classes. It is 
the fact of supernatural existence without a body that 
constitutes an anito, not particular rank or power or 
inclination toward moral or immoral acts. It is for the 
same reason that the souls of the dead are included. 

175 



176 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

No native would dream of thinking of a living man as 
an anito; but once his body is cold and only his soul 
survives, this soul is not essentially different from those 
spirits that have never walked the earth in a clothing 
of flesh. The result is that a sort of ancestor worship 
prevails. One's father and grandfather have become 
spirits with the same power of influencing the life of 
their descendants, as those beings who have always 
been immaterial. It is even more important in some 
ways to be on a satisfactory footing with the souls of 
the dead, since they naturally take a more personal 
interest in their offspring. A sacrifice is more likely to 
have weight with them; and on the other hand they 
are readier to resent neglect. 

Some tribes go so far as to believe that the souls of 
their ancestors have dealings with other spirits, similar 
to those which men have with one another. They bor- 
row property from them, and when they are unable or 
unwilling to pay, the creditor spirits, seeing no recourse, 
attempt to coerce them into settlement by plaguing 
their living descendants with sickness — exactly as a 
Filipino who cannot obtain satisfaction from a principal 
will attempt to take it from his kinsman or dependent. 
In such case, the living Ifugao must make sacrifices 
which will extinguish the debt of the dead. 

It is clear that the native feels very directly and con- 
cretely in these matters, and allows sentimental affec- 
tion to enter but slightly into his relations with the 
spirit world. He buys off his ancestors or gods or at- 
tempts to ingratiate himself with them; he does not put 
himself into a frame of mind which we should call truly 
worshipful. He fears the anito, but he is not really 
humble toward them. The attitude which a devout 
Christian or Mohammedan or Hindu has toward his 
god is foreign to him. Nor does he worship his an- 



RELIGION 177 

cestors as a Chinaman worships them with filial piety 
and respect for their memory. He extends to the spirit 
world the same conflicting desires and passions and sel- 
fishness which exist on this earth, and tries to make his 
way successful among the anito by much the same 
devices which he uses in his dealings with his fellow-men. 

As a point in the history of religious development, it 
would be very interesting to know whether the Filipino 
began with an idea of the anito as a sort of god and later 
extended the concept to include lesser spirits and those 
that were once human; or whether the origin of his 
faith was a belief in the power of the souls of his dead, 
and that from this original cult his anito concept was 
extended to include greater spirits and gods. The latter 
is perhaps the simpler and more plausible hypothesis. 
But we cannot be sure, since the anito religion is un- 
doubtedly extremely ancient even in its present form. 
Moreover, this type of religious belief is so fundamental 
in the whole of the East Indies that the problem can 
only be settled by comparative studies. 

The classes of spirits recognized by the Filipino are 
innumerable and their names often differ from tribe to 
tribe. There are spirits of the mountains, of the forest, 
of the water, and so on, ad infinitum. Some of these are 
demons that hunt human beings, or live on corpses, or 
work mischief in various ways. Others are protective 
or at least neutral in their attitude toward humanity, 
and these when offended can be propitiated, and when 
they are benevolent can do much to further the affairs 
of men. Above these are the great gods, who do not 
fall into classes like devils or angels, but possess in- 
dividual personalities and are addressed by their proper 
names. The number of these is enormously large. The 
Ifugao, for instance, are said to distinguish several 
thousand such deities by name. 



178 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



The greatest gods of all, those who grew first and had 
a share in shaping the world, are of course fewer; but 
it is significant that these are less often called upon in 
actual worship than the minor class divinities. They 
seem to be thought of as so remote in 
space or time that their lack of inter- 
est in the fortunes of men counter- 
balances their superior powers. The 
great gods are frequently grouped 
into families, or allotted to different 
layers of the sky, so that they consti- 
tute lineages and aeons. Their names 
show little uniformity, and are gen- 
erally of native origin. But their 
conception possesses a very strong 
Hindu flavor, and it is probable that 
although most of these deities were 
not directly introduced from India, at 
least the attitude which resulted in 
their recognition is due to importa- 
tion. The chief deity of the Tagalog 
was Bathala, which is a native pro- 
nunciation of the Sanskrit word for 
lord, hhattara. The Sambal knew 
their leading divinity as Akasi, the 
Bikol as Gugurang, the Bisaya as 
Dia, Laon, or Sidapa. The origin of 
these names is not known. 

Among the Ilokano and a number of 
the northern tribes that have remained 
pagan the chief deity is Kabunian. 
Other divinities or ancient heroes of godlike qualities 
known to an array of the mountain tribes of Luzon are 
Kahigat ; Balitok or ' ' Gold' ' ; Wigan; Lumawig; and Bugan, 
the most famous heroine of romance, myth, and prayer. 




Fig. 37. Carved Fig- 
ure of a Spirit. Nabaloi. 



EELIGION 179 

The Bagobo recognize nine heavens, each with its 
deity. These are, in order upward, Lumahat; Salamia- 
wan; Ubnuling; Tiun, a virgin goddess; Bia-fodan, 
wife oi Salamiawan; Bia-ka-pusud-an-langit, "Lady of 
the Navel of Heaven"; Kadeyuna, younger sister of 
Tiun; Malaki Lunsud, husband of Kadeyuna; and 
Pangulili, son of Uhniding. These names are native; 
the deities are of Hindu type. They are not worshipped, 
but remain purely literary or mythological concepts. 
The gods to whom the Bagobo prays and offers are 
Pamulak Manoho, Plant Person, the creator; Tigyama, 
the Protector; Malaki VOlu K'Waig, Hero of the Head 
of the Waters, who destroys sickness; Tarabume, for 
whom the rice ceremony is held; Paneyangen, patron of 
the brass casters; Abog, helper of hunters; Tagamaling, 
who is god and fiend in alternate months ; Mandarangan, 
of the warriors, to whom human life is offered; and a 
host of others. 

Souls. Holding the settled conviction that human 
beings become anito, it is inevitable that the Filipino 
must believe in the existence of something spiritual, 
in other words, a soul, in man through his lifetime. He 
goes farther. He attributes souls to animals; and both 
in Luzon and Mindanao states expressly that everything 
in the world has a soul. This idea fits in very nicely 
with the method of sacrifice. A spirit, being immaterial, 
would have no use for the substantial portion of what- 
ever was offered to it. It accepts the soul of the sacrifice, 
leaving the flesh of the victim, or the wine in the jar, 
for the worshipper's consumption. In the same way, 
when property is offered, it is merely exposed for a short 
time on an altar or in a spirit house with the requisite 
prayer of dedication — then taken back. To leave a 
valuable object to decay, or to deliberately destroy it, 
would do the recipient anito no good. But the native is 



180 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

logical in these matters and feels that an object that has 
once been offered and has had its soul put at the disposal 
of an anito is different from other objects. The Bagobo, 
for instance, who has offered a sword, girds this on 
again and is free to use it; but he cannot, without 
great danger of sickness or ill luck from the spirits, sell 
this sword or allow it to pass into the hands of others. 

The Bagobo slso attribute two souls to human beings, 
each inhabiting one side of the body. The left soul 
frequently leaves the body to roam, and dreams are 
nothing but its experiences on these wanderings. After 
death it becomes one of the class of evil spirits known as 
buso, who bring sickness and death to human beings. 
The right hand soul is the protector and companion 
of the body, which it never leaves except sometimes to 
lie on the ground as the shadow falling on the right side 
of the person. When it separates itself from its fleshly 
container, death ensues; but the soul is immortal and 
goes to join its ancestors and companions in the great 
underground country of the dead. 

Sacrifice and Prayer. Sacrifice and prayer are the 
two forms of ritual in which the Filipino chiefly expresses 
his religion. The intimate connection between animal 
sacrifice and the consumption of flesh has already been 
mentioned: every sacrifice means a feast. So strong is 
this association that wherever the Filipino has remained 
pagan he has even reversed the connection, and does not 
think of slaughtering an animal for food except on the 
occasion of some ceremony. He feels exactly the same 
way about his intoxicating liquor of rice or sugar cane. 
Worship of any consequence being impossible without 
the offering of this to the gods, drinking and drunken- 
ness have acquired a wholly religious flavor, and are 
never indulged in on profane occasions or for mere 
pleasure, — at any rate among the tribes that have kept 



182 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

their ancient faith pure. It is perhaps because of this 
connection that the Fihpino rarely becomes boisterous 
and never offensively disorderly in his cups. At a 
ceremony, people urge each other to drink, and take 
pride in the quantity of liquor which they consume, but 
restrain themselves within bounds. When the effect of 
the alcohol becomes overpowering, they go quietly off 
to sleep. This association of worship with the best 
things to eat and drink has tended to give Filipino 
religion a cheerful aspect that largely effaces the dread 
in which they hold their numerous demons and many of 
their spirits. 

Prayers are of two types: true prayers or direct 
appeals to the anito, and formulas. The formulas are 
narratives about the gods or ancient heroes. These are 
recited at the proper occasion, usually over a sacrifice, 
in a set form. They recount how a divinity wished to 
attain some end, or overcome some obstacle, and the 
means by which he succeeded. It is believed that the 
recounting of these ancient events in connection with 
the sacrifice, helps to bring about a similar outcome 
among those for whom the recital is made. Very often, 
therefore, the formula is nothing but a myth with a 
prayer appended. The Tinggian call such formulas diam; 
the Ifugao, when they have concluded the narrative 
proper, go on to a tulud or "pushing" in which, by 
naming place after place, they persuade themselves that 
they are drawing the gods from their far-away residence 
to the scene of worship and thereby compel their 
aid. They usually conclude with some such statement 
as ''not then, but now, not in the sky, but here," to 
clinch the efficacy of the address. 

All this looks like a formidable beginning for an elabo- 
rate ritual. In some respects, the Filipino has fulfilled 
this promise. He often knows from twenty to forty 



RELIGION 183 

different ceremonies; each with its greater or lesser 
offerings and its appropriate formula or prayers. But 
on the side of outward and visible expression, his 
religion has remained undeveloped. Its apparatus is of 
the simplest, and its symbolism meager. He knows no 
temples except the little spirit houses that have been 
described. While he frequently uses altars, these are 
of the simplest type conceivable: a porcelain bowl set 
in a spht bamboo stick, a coconut shell or plate hung 
from the rafters, and the like. If an actual offering is 
made in these, it is a handful of rice, a few betel nuts, or 
something equally insignificant. Some of the mountain- 
eers of Luzon dispense even with these paraphernalia. 
The If ugao seem to use no altars ; the Bontok no spirit 
house. Their sacrifices are placed on the ground or 
before the dwelling. Few if any objects are manu- 
factured for express service in worship: an everyday 
knife or spear or ax dispatches the victim, and the 
officiator, while he may put on his best, does not don 
distinctly rehgious clothing. Symbols of the type of 
our cross and the Mohammedan crescent, or the cloud 
terrace of the Pueblo Indians, the Filipino scarcely 
knows. 

Ceremonial Motives. The avowed objects of ritual 
reflect very neatly the profane ideals of the native. By 
far the greatest number of ceremonies are held to cure 
sickness. Often there is a distinct ritual for each recog- 
nized disease or type of disease believed to have been 
caused by one class of spirits. 

Allied to these ceremonies are what might be called 
general welfare rites made by the rich man or chief of 
the community for the good of all. These are supposed 
to promote the longevity, general health, and economic 
prosperity of the groups. From these rites it is only a 
step to the ceremonies previously referred to which 



184 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

are incumbent upon the distinctly rich in order to 
maintain their prestige and position in society. 

Another class of rites are agricultural. As already 
mentioned, these are almost wholly concerned with rice, 
other crops evidently being considered as thereby pro- 
vided for. Very often the agricultural ceremonies were 
interwoven with other motives. A freshly taken human 
head promoted the efficacy of the ceremony, which in 
consequence came to take on the aspect also of a rejoic- 
ing over victory. Any ritual able to promote the crops 
was likely to be considered powerful enough to bring 
about other desired results as well ; and thus very often 
a rite that in origin may have been agricultural is now 
also a ceremony for health or wealth. There is in fact 
scarcely a Filipino ritual which does not in some 
measure subserve more than one purpose. 

A thing so important in human careers as marriage 
required all possible furtherance by religious means 
from the Filipino point of view. The result was that 
weddings were even more elaborately ritualized than 
among ourselves. Often the betrothal and the comple- 
tion of negotiations or purchase, as well as the final 
wedding itself, were the occasion of showy and sacred 
ceremonies. Birth and adolescence went off with very 
much less attention. But death was again an occasion 
when religious emotions were awakened. The pagans 
of Luzon keep the corpse for a considerable period after 
death, address both it and the spirits repeatedly, and 
slaughter as large a number of animals as the means of 
the deceased and his family permit. In Mindanao, 
the corpse is not kept so long, but a funerary ceremony 
is also held on a great scale, either soon after death or 
at the conclusion of mourning. 

Religious Officials. There are no official priests for 
the conduct of religion among the modern pagans. 



RELIGION 185 

There are persons recognized as possessing religious 
power; but they hold this in virtue of personal ability, 
not as members of a caste or profession. Essentially, 
therefore, they are medicinemen or mediums rather 
than true priests, although the recitation of prayers 
and formulas is largely left to them. Any person en- 
dowed with the power of trance or ventriloquistic com- 
munication with the spirits sufficient to impress his 
listeners, is accepted as one of these mediums. Old and 
young, men and women, share indifferently in the office ; 
in fact among the majority of the tribes women seem 
to have been more successful in this capacity. The 
medium frequently holds seances with the spirits, calling 
them by name, asking them questions and causing them 
to answer. Such sessions take place in the darkened 
house. With the Ifugao the medium becomes possessed 
by a god during the public and open air conduct of a 
ceremony and speaks as the god. Very often the me- 
diums learn from older ones; but the chief condition 
of their recognition seems to be inborn power, and not 
education in any school or regulated tradition. They 
have been most frequently described under their 
Tagalog name of katalonan or by the Bisayan designa- 
tion hailan. Other tribes use different terms, but the 
institution remains substantially the same. It is un- 
doubtedly a very ancient element of Filipino and general 
East Indian religion. 

The ritual features here outlined apply most directly 
to the pagans of Mindanao and Luzon and the Tagalog 
and Bisaya, although among the latter the old cults, 
except for a few survivals, have long since died out be- 
fore Christianity. The Moro too has effaced most of 
his old worship under the sway of Mohammedanism. 
The religion of the Negritos and of the primitive 
groups on outlying islands, such as the Mangyan and 



186 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Tagbanua, is unfortunately very little known. Its 
forms are probably less elaborate than those of the 
Luzon and Bisayan nationalities, but all the bits of 
available evidence point to its being of the same type. 

Magic and Medicine. Like all nations who have 
not put science in the forefront of their thinking, the 
Filipinos are given to magical practices and beliefs. 
Also as usual, the dividing line between magic and 
religion is impossible to draw. Every sacrifice involves, 
in a sense, magical power, and the formulas that push or 
compel the gods to do the will of the worshipper fall in 
the same category. Conversely, a charm or fetish is 
never thought to be efficacious merely through its own 
directly inherent virtues. It always stands in some con- 
nection, immediate or remote, with the god, spirit, or 
soul. 

Medicine is a case in point. The Bagobo attribute the 
majority of severe illnesses to the operations of evil 
spirits called buso, who live on the flesh of corpses and 
therefore are constantly employing every means in 
their power to procure food for themselves by causing 
the death of human beings. Often, the buso enters the 
body of his intended victim. There he remains, unless 
expelled, until death ensues, when he flies away re- 
joicing in anticipation of the feast that awaits him on 
the victim's interment. In other cases he is believed 
not to need to enter the patient's body, but to be able to 
work his harm from a distance. Other diseases the 
Bagobo declare to be brought on by a breach of taboo, 
that is the violation of some magic rule. Among such 
trespasses are the disposal of an object once devoted to 
the gods by sacrifice; the selling of even the most 
ordinary piece of cloth before it is entirely completed; 
the wearing by a young man of the type of jacket re- 
served for the old, or of the head piece dyed in the color 



RELIGION 187 

for successful warriors; planting rice in any other 
direction than southward; laughing at one's own re- 
flection in the water; or winding a brass girdle about 
one's waist an odd instead of an even number of times. 
When none of these explanations seem appropriate, 
the Bagobo attributes his suffering to the experiences of 
his soul, or rather to the left-hand one of his two souls. 
He says that the soul jumps into a river and his body 
aches in the abdomen ; the soul strikes his head against 
a tree, pain in the corporeal head is the result; a sore 
mouth may be the result of the soul drinking boiling 
water. 

The methods of curing disease are as various as the 
behefs concerning its origin. The gods are prayed to 
and given sacrifices. The afflicting buso spirit himself 
may sometimes be bought off in Bagobo behef by an 
offering of betel nut. Little figures are slung on the 
necklace of a child with the idea of drawing the buso 
spirit out of the body into the manikin. Again, a 
priest-medium is sometimes summoned who has re- 
course to a ceremonial sprinkling of water on the joints 
of the patient, or prescribes cinnamon bark, crow liver, 
snake bile, or some similar medicine. Very frequently 
the remedial substance is burned to ashes which are 
drunk with a quantity of hot water. At other times 
the hot ashes are merely laid upon the diseased part. 
This shows quite clearly that the native attitude 
regarding such medical substances is that they operate 
magically rather than pharmaceutically. That this is 
the basis of belief is also clear from another treatment 
sometimes given patients : they are made to inhale the 
smoke from a burning nest of the limokun bird. The 
efficacy of this treatment rests on the fact that the bird 
is endowed with magical power — he is the omen bird 
above all others. The smoke is only the means of 



188 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

conveying his beneficial supernatural qualities to the 
sick person. 

No two tribes follow exactly the same practices ; what 
is taboo to one is often freely permitted among the other. 
One may recognize certain causes of disease and cure 
for them which the other is totally unaware of. But 
however much the specific beliefs and acts vary, the 
general basis is everywhere identical, and the foregoing 
sketch of Bagobo magic and medicine may therefore 
be taken as substantially representative of the psy- 
chology of all the Philippine peoples. 

Taboos. Taboos against personal activity are 
observed by every people in the archipelago. Almost 
always they are laid on mourners for the dead, but often 
are imposed also when disease breaks out or other un- 
favorable or critical junctures arise. Usually the taboo 
operates by forbidding, so far as possible, both work and 
enjoyment, and the consumption of wine, rice, and other 
choice foods. Such a taboo rarely expires automatically. 
When it has run its proper period, it is formally lifted 
by a ceremony of some sort. If the occasion is suffi- 
ciently important, such a rite of termination almost 
always involves a sacrifice — perhaps even that of 
human life, either in combat or as a formal offering. 
Even the most primitive of the Filipinos, however, are 
much less inclined to apply such taboos on the occasion 
of birth and particularly adolescence than many other 
primitive peoples. In spite of its considerable preva- 
lence, also, the taboo idea is not nearly so developed or 
powerful in the Philippines, nor anywhere in the East 
Indies for that matter, as in the Polynesian and Melane- 
sian islands of the Pacific. 

Omensand Divination. On the other hand omens 
play a disproportionately large part in Filipino life. 
Natural omens are exceedingly numerous. An animal 



RELIGION 189 

of a particular species runs across the path and a journey 
is postponed. A ceremony must be promptly abandoned 
if an earthquake occurs, else the giver of the rite will 
surely die. A rotten tree crashing to the ground at night 
is a portent of death. Hundreds if not thousands of such 
omens could be cited. Sometimes a charm or prayer is 
believed sufficient to avert the indicated event; but in 
many cases there is no recourse, according to the native 
point of view, but to delay or wholly renounce whatever 
undertaking is on foot. 

For every important enterprise, such as attacks by 
war parties, marriages, and the like, omens were deliber- 
ately sought by means of special ceremonies. Every 
tribe that has to any considerable extent preserved its 
ancient religion appears to have one or more such divina- 
tory rites. A stone or piece of iron or firebrand may be 
suspended and the direction or manner of its swinging 
read as prophetic of the future; or a stick is stood up 
and allowed to fall ; or the priest-medium may study the 
reflections or images in a vessel of water. Often the 
method is that of question and answer. Names are 
recited, or direct queries put, until a sign is thought to 
be given by the omen object. When a Nabaloi falls ill, 
the priest-medium mentions the various classes of 
spirits that might have produced the disease until the 
response is obtained. The cause of the sickness having 
been in this way determined, the cure is effected by 
making the offering and ceremony that are appropriate 
to the particular spirits. Similar procedures are fol- 
lowed when it is desired to find lost objects or to dis- 
cover a thief. 

Some form of ordeal serving the detection of theft, 
or even the determination of guilt between two persons 
mutually accusing each other, was observed by most 
Philippine peoples; and a variety of devices serving 



190 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

this purpose were worked out among the various tribes- 
all of them believed to be infallible. Some of these have 
already been mentioned in the section on native law. 

Another type of prediction is palm reading, known to 
the Tirurai as fengintuanan, and practised also by the 
Bagobo with attention to lines of life, wealth, and the 
like, rather similarly to the indications recognized in our 
own system. That palmistry has been reported only 
from Mindanao suggests that it is a relatively recent 
importation, possibly an accompaniment of Islamism. 

Perhaps the most interesting of all the many forms of 
divination prevaiUng in the Philippines are two types 
familiar to us from the religion of the ancient Greeks 
and Romans : augury or the foretelling of the future by 
the flight and actions of birds, and haruspicy or predic- 
tion by the examination of the internal organs of 
slaughtered animals. In the southern Philippines a 
species of pigeon known as the limokun is the favorite 
omen bird. In northern Luzon, smaller species known 
as tuttut, pitpit, ichu, and so on, are favored. The liver 
and bile sack of the pig are the internal organs most 
frequently inspected. The color, shape, or size of these 
are portentous in much the same way as the appearance 
of the omen bird on the right or left side of the observer, 
its behavior, or its call. 

Unfortunately, the details of these methods of divina- 
tion have been much less fully recorded in the Philip- 
pines than in Borneo ; or else Filipino practices were in 
themselves much less elaborate. Nevertheless, all the 
evidence available suggests that the existence of these 
types of foretelling in the East Indies is no mere interest- 
ing coincidence, but that the practices are directly and 
historically connected with those of the ancient Mediter- 
ranean peoples. Hepatoscopy, the particular method of 
divination by means of the liver of sacrificial animals, 



EELIGION 191 

has been shown to have originated in Babylonia. From 
there the custom spread with very little modification 
to surrounding parts of the world. Westward, it was 
carried practically without change to the Etruscans, and 
from this people the Romans derived it at an early 
date. Eastward, it was transported as far as China. 
The details of this long transmission remain to be 
worked out; but the correspondence of the minuter 
features of interpretation of the organ are so close, that 
there can be no question of the ultimate Babylonian 
source of the Chinese practice. 

For the East Indies, there is an even greater gap in our 
knowledge, but at least the general type of procedure 
is identical. With liver divination established as an 
intact custom among so advanced and conservative a 
people as the Chinese, it is almost certain that it must 
at some time or other have been introduced also into 
southeastern Asia; and once rooted there, there were a 
thousand opportunities for its spread to the East Indies. 
For augury the case is less complete; but the associa- 
tion between this form of foretelling and liver divina- 
tion both in pagan Rome and in the East Indies, sug- 
gests rather powerfully that the two allied sets of prac- 
tices have traveled over large parts of the world in 
company. There is something characteristically non- 
Hindu about both of them; and yet it is entirely con- 
ceivable that these methods of divination may at some 
time have attached themselves rather externally to 
Hindu religion and have been transmitted along with it. 
It is not unlikely that they entered the East Indies 
and the Philippines in companionship with animal 
sacrifice. 

In any event, a vast perspective is opened up. The 
modern Filipino mountaineer and the Roman of twenty- 
five hundred years ago practised the same customs not 



192 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

because their minds worked identically, and auto- 
matically produced the same reaction, but because both 
were subjected to common historical influences — both 
of them subjected, although at far-removed times and 
places, to the same movement of civilization. With 
two or three instances of such common origin estab- 
lished, it is certain that there must have been a strong 
tendency for many other elements of culture to be 
transmitted, and little doubt that time and again the 
tendency became realized. 

From this broader point of view, then, Filipino civili- 
zation, in fact all East Indian civilization, is far from 
being an entity in itself. It constitutes only one phase 
of the infinitely more ancient and complex civilization 
that has for ages prevailed from Europe to the middle 
of the Pacific Ocean, and which can be fully understood 
only as an interrelated composite. The underlying 
problem of Philippine culture is not what is distinctly 
native about it or how it came to be so, but what is 
Chinese and Indian, Polynesian and Arab and Greek 
and Roman in it; just as the cultures of all these groups 
cannot be fully comprehended as detached units, but if 
insight is desired, must be looked upon as mere frag- 
ments of a vast whole that immeasurably transcends 
any one of them. 

Mythology. Filipino myths and tales are a strange 
composite of Indian and primitive Malaysian constitu- 
ents. The Javanese and peninsular Malay have taken 
over Hindu epics and romances. The Filipino has not; 
but the ultimate Indian origin of much of the content of 
his traditions is undeniable. The permeating influence 
of the greater civilization long ago reached him, but not 
with its full brunt. It evidently filtered through in bits 
and at second or third hand. Before the more luxuriant 
products of Hindu imagination, native invention gave 



RELIGION 193 

way at point after point. Yet the continuity of native 
life as a whole being undisturbed by any great shock, 
the lower civilization of the islands remained the 
recipient organism, as it were, which received and 
assimilated and worked over the more exalted literary 
plots and religious concepts that came into it piece- 
meal. 

Heroic Romances, The Philippine nationality 
whose mythology is best known is the Tinggian, a 
people never wholly out of contact with the coast and 
yet maintaining their ancient paganism to the present. 
The longest and finest of their tales can only be de- 
scribed as romances of battle, love, magic, hidden births, 
intrigue, and other adventure cast in the heroic mould. 
The actors are Aponi-tolau, the great warrior, and 
Aponi-bolinayen, whom he marries; his sister Aponi- 
gawani and Aponi-bolinayen' s brother, Aponi-balagan, 
between whom a second love story is spun ; their parents 
and sons; and innumerable monsters, mythical beings, 
and enemies. The chief personages appear under a 
great variety of names, but are always identified as the 
same. Each narrator recounts his tale differently, so 
that the stories frequently overlap in incidents, and yet 
possess a total variety sufficient to have made possible 
their combination into a great coherent cycle. This 
unification into one great epic the Tinggian however 
never accomplished. This failure would be enough, 
even if other indications were lacking, to suggest that he 
had never come into direct contact with the Hindu; 
since the latter at an ancient time developed the faculty 
of combining vast numbers of episodes into a long 
plot. On the other hand, the primary motives of these 
Tinggian romances are love and fighting, and suggest 
very strongly that these tales are not the uninfluenced 
product of a naively primitive culture ; since really un- 



194 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

civilized people, whether they fight or love much or 
little, almost invariably concern themselves but slightly 
with these subjects in their traditions. 

A further indication of the blended quality of the 
Tinggian romances is afforded by the nature of the 
personages. These are distinctly human — glorified 
human beings indeed — but clearly neither gods placed 
high and serene above the affairs of men, nor on the 
other hand the indeterminately animal or half animal 
characters that characteristically populate the myth- 
ology of wholly uncivilized peoples. 

There is a perceptible although simple literary style 
in these stories. The plot moves swiftly and yet with 
frequent touches of the fuller treatment which culti- 
vated literary narration demands. Stock expressions 
abound as freely as stock sentiments and incidents. 
Characterization, in the modern sense, remains ex- 
tremely rudimentary, but some success is evinced in 
portraying or suggesting emotions. 

Formulas. The second type of narratives are 
called diam by the Tinggian and are formulas recited as 
part of ceremonies. Possessing therefore a distinctly 
practical purpose, they are much less imaginative than 
the romances as well as briefer; and as a rule they con- 
fine themselves pretty strictly to the business in hand. 
Thus the formula recited in the sayang tells how the 
people formerly celebrated this rite erroneously, until 
instructed by the deity Kadaklan to watch a correct 
performance. After this the spirits came in greater 
numbers and the rite resulted more efficaciously. 

Some tribes do not differentiate these two classes of 
narratives as sharply as do the Tinggian. The Nabaloi 
and Ifugao, for instance, possess a much less developed 
cycle of romances, but embroider their ritualistic formu- 
las with many of the episodes of adventure and interest 



RELIGION 195 

in the hero's fortunes and personality which the Ting- 
gian reserve for their romances. 

Explanatory Myths. A third type of traditions 
comprises myths proper, that is, stories of origin, ex- 
planation, and supernatural experience. In these are 
recounted the origin of the earth, of the sun and moon, 
of fire, the history of the flood, the cause of death, the 
reasons for the shapes and habits of animals and birds, 
the origin of peculiar stones, and similar matters. Many 
of these tales are explanatory nature myths such as are 
typical of primitive peoples. They draw little line 
between the spiritual and the human, the human and 
the animal, the animate and the inanimate. They do 
not to any great extent personify the elements and 
forces of nature in the manner of the mythology of the 
Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, or Hindus. In fact, 
like nearly all origin myths of truly primitive nations, 
they have little connection with ritual, and practically 
none with the worship of personalized deities. The 
Tinggian tales of this type are brief and rather bald and 
usually consist of a single episode not brought into re- 
lation with any others of the same type. For instance, 
a flood comes and Fire takes refuge m bamboo, stones, 
and iron. This is the reason it can still be extracted 
from these substances. Again, the spirit Kaboniyan 
enters the body of a woman to teach her how to cure 
illness and how to farm. From here the people derive 
their knowledge of these arts. At a significant moment 
a dog kills a cock and Kaboniyan informs her that this 
means that death has entered the world. Another tale 
accounts for the monkey, who was once a man given to 
leaning on his planting stick instead of working con- 
tinuously. The stick grew into a tail and he went off 
as the animal. Other narratives relate the experience 
of human beings with spirits and demons, usually with 



196 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

an implied moral from which the hearers can profit. 
Thus it is told how people failed to lay iron and a 
certain vine on the grave of a dead person; whereupon 
a spirit immediately observed the omission and stole 
away the body. It is clear that these myths constitute 
a kind of elemental substitute for the two things that 
we call science and moralizing. They not only attempt 
to satisfy curiosity as to the causes that shape the world, 
but point out the lines of conduct that are respectively 
profitable and inexpedient. 

The rather fragmentary nature of these explanatory 
myths is typical of other Phillippine tribes; but 
occasionally some idea is singled out for more elaborate 
treatment. Thus the majority of the Luzon mountain- 
eers tell at length of a great ancient flood from which 
only a brother and sister escaped. They married and 
after a series of adventures re-populated the world. 
This tale has been recorded so frequently and with so 
many variations that it has clearly obtained a primary 
hold on the mythological imagination of an entire 
series of tribes, and appears to be one of the most funda- 
mental traditions known to the Filipinos. It was told, 
for instance, by the ancient Bisaya, of whose mythology 
and that of the Tagalog only some slight fragments 
have been preserved. It is known, however, that these 
great nations brought their accounts of origins into 
connection with genealogies of gods, heroes, and prob- 
ably personal ancestors. 

Fables. A fourth class of tales are fables, usually 
with animal actors, and similar in many ways to those 
familiar in our own civilization, except for the fact that 
they avoid the specific pointing of a moral. Trickery 
is one of the motives most emphasized. Thus the Ting- 
gian relate how turtle and monkey planted bananas, the 
former in the ground but the ape by hanging them up. 



RELIGION 197 

Of course, turtle alone grew a crop; but, being unable to 
climb his tree, sent monkey up to secure the fruit. 
Instead, monkey devoured it and then went comfortably 
to sleep. Turtle revenged himself by frightening mon- 
key and causing him to fall to his death on sharp points 
which he had set around the tree; and then sold his 
flesh to other monkeys. When, however, he subsequently 
taunted them as cannibals, they caught and prepared 
to execute him. He convinced them, by pointing to the 
marks on his shell, that cutting and burning could not 
hurt him; whereupon they tried to drown him. When 
he emerged from the water with a fish, they became en- 
thusiastic at the unforeseen prospect and attempted to 
imitate him, but lost their own lives. 

Another tale relates the race of buffalo and shell. 
After buffalo has run a distance he calls to his competi- 
tor, whose place is taken by another shell that answers 
for him. The buffalo, thinking that he has not yet out- 
distanced his rival, runs again and again until he falls 
dead from exhaustion. 

Little stories of this type are told in very similar form 
among every people in the islands and many have 
been found in Borneo and elsewhere in the East Indies. 
Some are quite demonstrably of Hindu origin, and all 
are cast in a Hindu mould. Inasmuch as many of our 
own fables are also known to be of Indian origin or 
patterned on Hindu examples, it is not surprising that 
these tales from the Philippines have a strangely familiar 
ring in our ears. It is no wonder, since both we and the 
Filipinos have derived them from the same source. 



Chapter VI 
KNOWLEDGE AND ART 

Astronomy. From what has been said of his myth- 
ology, it is clear that the uncivilized Filipino could not 
have possessed much of what we are wont to name 
scientific knowledge. Yet some rudiments of astronomy 
and other branches of knowledge existed among the 
most backward groups. The pagans of southern 
Mindanao distinguish several constellations, and deter- 
mine the season for beginning rice planting by the 
appearance of poyo-poyo, probably the Pleiades, and 
balatik, Orion. From Luzon several calendars have been 
reported; that is, names of recognized divisions of the 
year. There is some doubt whethei each new moon 
receives an appellation of its own, or whether the terms 
refer to less definite periods. They designate seasons 
or seasonal occupations, especially with reference to 
agriculture. Even if these calendars are really lunar, 
they must be of quite a primitive type, because twelve 
lunations do not coincide with the year and they con- 
tain no indication of any regulated method of correc- 
tion. 

As regards the sun, moon, and planets, the Filipinos 
hold only the fanciful concepts of mythology, except 
where the superior wisdom of the Hindus has reached 
them. They share, for instance, in the world-wide 
primitive belief that eclipses are caused by a monster 
that attempts to devour the moon, and can be frightened 
off by shouts and noises. But the particular form which 
this belief takes among them is distinctly Indian: 
the monster is a giant bird that bears the Hindu name 
rahu. An even more specific importation is the ob- 
servance by the Magindanao Moro of five divisions of 

199 



200 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

the day designated Mahesvara, Kala, Sri, Berma, 
Bisnu — the slightly altered names of famous Hindu 
deities. These periods, which appear to be based on the 
visible planets, are used in written astrological divina- 
tion. It is of special interest to find this precise relic 
of Hindu astronomy maintained among a Mohammedan 
people. It is likely that the introduction of Arabic 
writing was the cause of the preservation of the Indian 
practice. 

Use of Numbers. As regards the mathematical 
abilities of the Filipino we are unfortunately very little 
informed. It is practically certain that he had no idea 
whatever of geometry or any of the other abstract 
branches of the science, and contented himself with 
simple arithmetical operations. He did, however, add 
and substract numbers considerably larger than those 
which most uncivilized people are accustomed to deal 
with; and while it is extremely doubtful whether he 
possessed any system of multiplication as such, he fol- 
lowed it in effect in his schemes of values, in which five, 
twenty-five, fifty, five hundred, and a thousand units 
received special designations. This is the Bontok plan: 
the Tagalog and Bisaya may have had a more refined 
one. Such a system does not make for mathematical 
insight in our sense, but is capable of astounding 
utility for arithmetical operations ; very much as among 
ourselves a person very inadequately equipped in 
formal arithmetic sometimes operates easily and cor- 
rectly with large sums of money merely through know- 
ing the relative values of coins. With his keen property 
sense, and his possessions rated accurately as well as 
highly, the Filipino had of course to possess such a 
practical faculty. 

The purely native stratum of religion appears to be 
free from marked preference for any symbolic or 



KNOWLEDGE AND ART 201 

ritualistic number. The Bagobo consider even numbers 
lucky and odd ones unlucky; except nine, which is 
always good. This is a point of view characteristic of 
European and Asiatic civilization, and therefore un- 
doubtedly imported. Really primitive people rarely 
have any feeling for odd or even, but fix on a certain 
number, such as four or seven, as being the most com- 
plete and perfect one, and then bring it into their 
ceremonials and beliefs at every possible opportunity. 
This is not a Filipino habit. 

Sanskrit Loan Words. It would be very strange 
if the many pieces of knowledge that were carried from 
India into the Philippines had entered without bringing 
in their names at least sometimes. This has actually 
happened ; and all the lowland Filipino dialects contain 
a stock of Sanskrit words. Several of these have already 
been mentioned in connection with one or another phase 
of religion. From the coast a fraction of these words 
have spread to the interior districts, at any rate in the 
south. In northern Luzon words of Sanskrit origin are 
rare and perhaps wholly lacking, except as they may 
have been imported in recent centuries by the intrusive 
Ilokano. There is no doubt that the mountain region 
of this island has been in every way the part of the 
Philippines least subject to Hindu influence. 

As regards the greater nationalities, it is rather re- 
markable that the number of Sanskrit words is about 
twice as great in Tagalog as in Bisaya and the Mindanao 
dialects, in spite of the greater proximity of the latter 
to Borneo. This difference can scarcely be wholly ex- 
plained away as due to our more perfect knowledge of 
Tagalog. It seenis likely that the latter people received 
their loan words, and with them a considerable body of 
Indian culture, through direct contact with the Malay 
Peninsula or the coast of Indo-china which they front 



202 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

across the China Sea; and that another Sanskrit ele- 
ment penetrated Mindanao and the Bisayan islands by 
way of Borneo. Subsequently the two sections are 
likely to have transmitted to each other part of the 
cultural and linguistic elements which each had re- 
ceived separately. Since words persist so tenaciously, 
if at all, that their original sources can usually be 
determined with certainty, whereas customs and ideas 
are constantly made over until their origin becomes 
much more doubtful, the prosecution of accurate phil- 
ological study in the Philippines promises to throw 
much light on the exact history of Indian and East 
Indian contacts with the archipelago. 

How far linguistic analysis may go in unravelling 
history can be illustrated from a quotation from Pardo 
de Tavera. The words which Tagalog borrowed from 
Sanskrit he says, ''are those which signify intellectual 
'acts, moral conceptions, emotions, superstitions, names 
of deities, of planets, of numerals of high number, 
of botany, of war and its results and conclusions, and 
finally of titles and dignities, some animals, instru- 
ments of industry, and the names of money." From 
this he goe^ on to argue that Hindus must have 
been present in the Philippines in person, and at 
least among the Tagalog filled the principal positions 
of power and prestige: "the warfare, religion, liter- 
ature, industry, and agriculture were at one time in 
the hands of the Hindus." This is perhaps an exag- 
gerated inference. East Indians saturated with Hindu 
civilization could just as well have produced the same 
effects in the Philippines. But it is clear that the 
effects occurred; and it will be only a matter of more 
patient and critical study to trace them with consid- 
erable accuracy, and perhaps even determine their period 
quite closely. 



KNOWLEDGE AND ART 203 

Writing. With the Sanskrit words came a form of 
writing based on the Sanskrit alphabet. This was not 
only considerably modified, but much abbreviated, 
yet the connection is perfectly clear. The Tagalog 
wrote with three signs for vowels and twelve for con- 
sonants; which, with the simple phonetic character of 
his tongue, sufficed. In reality, this script was a syl- 
labary rather than an alphabet. The vowels were 
written only when they stood alone or at the beginning 
of words. Each consonant sign stood for the con- 
sonant followed by a sound a. A mark or point above 
changed the vowel of the syllable to e or i, and the same 
point below the character caused it to be sounded with 
the vowel o or u. The Bisaya, Pampanga, and other 
nations followed a very similar system of writing, and 
only the Mohammedans came to use Arabic script, 
which is much less adapted to the genius of the Malayan 
languages. The alphabets of Hindu origin have long 
since gone out of use among all the Christian nations, 
who now employ the ordinary Roman letters with their 
Spanish values. Two distinctly primitive people, 
however, the Mangyan of Mindoro and some of the 
Tagbanua of Palawan, have preserved forms of this 
ancient writing. The Mangyan write horizontally 
from left to right; the Tagbanua in vertical columns 
reading from top to bottom and the columns fol- 
lowing in order from right to left. The latter 
seems to have been the method also of the Tagalog. 
The inscriptions consist of incisions in the surface 
of strips of bamboo. The Tagbanua alphabet betrays 
its close affiliation to the Tagalog letters as they 
have been preserved in the handwriting of Father 
Chirino ; although most of the letters have been turned 
one-quarter way round from their proper position in 
the column. 



i,e 

a 
o , u 

la 

da 

n a 

ha 

ha 

Sa 

ta 
ha 

ma 






J) 






H 







^ 

c 



? 





Fig. 39. Philippine Alphabets. To right, 
modern Tagbanua alphabet incised on a 
slip of bamboo. Middle, ancient Tagalog 
alphabet, with letters turned to show simi- 
larity to the Tagbanua ones (the Tagalog 
characters come into proper position if the 
column is read as a horizontal line). Left, 
value of the letters in Roman characters 

204 



KNOWLEDGE AND ART 205 

With the Mangyan and Tagbanua still maintaining 
their ancient system of writing, it seems almost certain 
that the mountaineers of Luzon — some of whom have 
been even less exposed to Spanish contacts — would have 
done the same if they had ever possessed such a system. 
The inference that they have always been illiterate 
coincides with other indications that stamp them as 
being that group of Filipinos (other than the Negrito) 
who have preserved the primitive pre-Hinduized Malay- 
sian culture in its greatest purity. 

Art. On the side of plastic and depictive art, the 
Filipino cannot be accorded the right to high rank. 
He does pleasingly decorate useful objects such as 
cloth, mats, and metal work, but he rarely goes beyond 
mere surface ornamentation, and if he does his efforts 
are almost invariably crude. His most pretentious 
artistic achievements, such as steel and brass chasing 
and the textile patterns produced by dyeing in parts, 
have already been described, and are obviously due to 
foreign influence. The contrast between his own 
scantily and simply decorated pottery and the finely 
glazed wares which he received from China is very strik- 
ing. The cloth which he weaves according to his own 
devices usually bears only the simplest patterns, such as 
stripes. His house has remained utilitarian, with scarcely 
even a rudimentary endeavor at ornament. The anito 
figures or idols which he once used in religion and which 
the mountaineer of Luzon still sometimes carves, were 
rude: a suggestion of the human figure in abbreviated 
conventionalized form without aesthetic aspiration suf- 
ficed all needs. Pictures as such the Filipino seems 
never to have attempted. Altogether he stands well be- 
low the Polynesian in the development of his art ; and 
this is the more remarkable because industrially he was 
at least equal and economically much more advanced. 



^^$?$^$^^^ 
























KNOWLEDGE AND ART 



207 



Music. Native music had reached the point of 
possessing a number of instruments of the three types 
generally recognized: percussion, wind, and string. 
The Mohammedan tribes, and those who have come 
under their influence, possess not only xylophones, but 
sets of gongs on which melodies can be played or accom- 
panied. These instruments are almost certainly not of 
home invention. Throughout almost all the islands a 
sort of guitar is found. This is made of a joint of bam- 
boo from which several cords of the surface fiber have 





Fig. 41. Ifugao and Negrito (lower) Spoons, illustrating the upper and lower 
degrees of plastic, decoration achieved by the Filipino in carving. 

been slit loose except at the ends. These cords are then 
given tension by being elevated on bridges. Even the 
Negritos use this instrument. More elaborate stringed 
instruments of obviously Asiatic form have penetrated 
to such pagan tribes as the Bagobo. A sort of Jew's harp 
or tuning fork cut in a sliver of bamboo has almost 
universal distribution and is particularly used in court- 
ship. It does not carry enough volume for public 
performance. Simple flutes are also widely diffused. 



m 



^\^ 



KNOWLEDGE AND ART 209 

They are straight tubes without a reed, blown from the 
end: the Negrito sometimes hold them to the nose. 

These instruments as collected in museums theoreti- 
cally afford a means of determination of the scale or 
scales that underlie Filipino music, but unfortunately 
the practical obstacles to such procedure are great. 
The strings very quickly get out of tune, and in a set of 
gongs it is quite possible that mechanical insufficiency 
leads the native musician sometimes to accept several 
pieces which he feels to be somewhat improperly pitched. 
It is therefore necessary to depend upon notations of 
native music, and of these very few have as yet been 
made. The Nabaloi do seem to follow a fairly definite 
scale, substantially the same as our melodic minor, but 
with the fundamental tone in the middle and its 
ordinary range to the fifth above and below, or but little 
more than an octave over all. The Moro gong sets have 
a range of one and a half to two octaves, but the few 
that have been examined differ, so that the musical 
scheme on which they are put together remains un- 
certain. The rhythms of the vocal music seem every- 
where to be rather simple, and the structure of songs 
equally so. Considerably more elaborate melodies are 
known from distinctly primitive people in several other 
parts of the world. On the whole, the Filipino is not 
given to much singing except on the occasion of gather- 
ings and celebrations, and then his song is almost always 
accompanied by instrument and dance. The constant 
use of tuned or tunable instruments by many tribes 
cannot but have had some effect on their singing, so that 
the ancient type of essentially vocal music is likely 
to have been preserved in aboriginal purity only among 
the Negritos and some of the brown-skinned pagans of 
Luzon. 



Chapter VII • . 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 

IF now we attempt to draw to a head the many threads 
that have been followed through the preceding 
pageS; we find conclusions something like this: — 

The three aspects under which groups of human 
beings can be considered — their physique or race, their 
speech, and their life or civilization — do not yield co- 
incident pictures for the Philippines. They must there- 
fore be reviewed separately, as in so many other parts 
of the world. 

Racially, three varieties of man occur in the islands, 
besides the intrusive Europeans and Chinese of recent 
centuries. One of these three varieties, the Negrito, 
is of negroid affinities and a dwarf race. The two others, 
the Indonesian and the Malaysian, are both Mongoloid 
■ — the former less, the latter more specifically so; the 
difference between them is not very great, although 
indubitable. These three races or subraces reached the 
Philippines in the order named. The region of the 
source of the Negritos is wholly unknown. The origin 
of the Indonesians and Malaysians appears to have been 
in southern Asia, although the time and route of their 
arrivals remain questionable. 

On the side of language, the peoples of the Philip- 
pines do not break up into well marked groups, but 
without exceptions speak forms of a single mother 
tongue, the Malay o-Polynesian that prevails over most 
of the East Indies and Oceania. The local varieties 
of this within the Philippines are not so different but 
that they may well have developed on the spot. 



212 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Civilization is mere complex than either population or 
speech, comprising at least half a dozen strains or 
streams of different source. 

The earliest of these culture forms is that carried by 
the Negrito on his arrival in the islands. This must have 
been excessively simple and has not been able to main- 
tain itself through several thousand years of contact 
and competition with more advanced types of civiliza- 
tion. The customs of the Negrito of today are an 
abridged copy of the customs of the other islanders. 
Only the Negrito attitude toward life, his habits as 
contrasted with his customs, his social psychology as 
distinct from the content of his social activity, seem to 
be a remnant of his aboriginal mode of life. 

Primitive Indonesian culture has also not been pre- 
served intact. Its best surviving representative is 
found among the pagan mountain inhabitants of north- 
ern Luzon; but even this culture has assimilated much 
from those that followed it. Indonesian civilization 
appears to have maintained itself with less change in 
the domain of social and familiar fabric than on the 
side of industry, invention, knowledge, and belief. 

The culture of the Malaysians who followed the 
Indonesians may at first have been very similar to that 
of the latter but has subsequently become heavily 
tinctured by absorption of elements of Indian civiliza- 
tion; or it may have been pretty well Hinduized before 
its earliest carriers reached the Philippines. A finer 
analysis than is at present possible will be needed to 
resolve this alternative. 

The Indian influences are on the whole perhaps the 
most profound that have affected Philippine civiliza- 
tion. Two circumstances are of importance regarding 
them. First, there seem to have been carried with them 
a number of culture elements whose ultimate origin 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 213 

was not Hindu but Western: the use of iron, religious 
divination and sacrifice, for instance. Secondly, at 
least the bulk and perhaps all of the Indian importation 
took place through the mechanism not of Hindus but of 
more or less Hinduized Malaysians who visited or 
settled the Philippines from other parts of the East 
Indies. 

Chinese civilization affected the Philippines later and 
much more sparingly than Indian. The significant 
trait of Chinese relations is that they introduced 
materials and products, but neither ideas nor institu- 
tions. 

Mohammedanism cut deep, but began to come late — 
little more than five centuries ago, — spread over only 
a small part of the islands, and was then almost com- 
pletely arrested by the Spaniards. Law, knowledge, 
writing, political organization, some handicrafts, were 
thoroughly made over in the south of the archipelago 
in the wake of this dominating religious cult. 

The Spaniards gave a semi-European impress to the 
life of nine-tenths of the Philippine people. They 
introduced Catholicism and letters and caused con- 
siderable remodelling of economic and industrial con- 
ditions, besides causing a steady and large increase of 
population. 

The changes due to Americans have been great, con- 
sidering the, scant twenty years involved. They may 
be summarized as having been remarkably efficient in 
the direction of bringing the more backward nation- 
alities of the islands nearer participation in contempo- 
raneous Western civilization; but for that very reason 
fall outside the scope of ethnology. 

The strains or compolients~brTiereditary race and 
acquired civilization differ not only in number but in 
the following respect. Nearly every Philippine people 



214 PEOPLES or THE PHILIPPINES 

can be assigned definitely or at least preponderatingly 
to this or that race. It is pure Negrito, prevailingly 
Indonesian, or clearly Malaysian, as the case may be. 
Only a few small groups are sufficiently intermediate 
to be classifiable with doubt. But there is no Philip- 
pine nationality of which we can say that its civilization 
is wholly of one stratum. Without exception each tribe 
has, in its culture, elements belonging to different layers. 
A people of Mindanao will use the bow, which is perhaps 
due to Indonesian civilization; the blowgun, which may 
be of Malaysian source; steel swords, whose manufacture 
was introduced from India; and firearms which the 
Mohammedan brought in. A pagan group in Luzon will 
beat out barkcloth in the manner of its Indonesian 
ancestors or Negrito predecessors and also weave cotton 
that came from India; live in a state of society that is 
native pre-Mal^ysian, divine the future by methods that 
originated in Babylonia and were familiar in Rome, and 
possess pottery and brass imported from China. The 
Mangyan, a distinctly '' wild " people, use the bow which 
goes back to a pre-iron culture stage, and an alphabet de- 
rived from India; the " civilized " Tagalog read and write 
Roman letters, wear Europeanized clothes, but continue 
to live largely in the Malaysian status of society. 

In short, then, six to eight separate waves of civiliza- 
tion can be positively established as having reached the 
Philippines and left their influence upon the life of the 
islands. But not one of these successive cultures has 
been preserved complete . They have been superimposed ; 
but they have interpenetrated one another; until today 
there is probably not a single nationality but shares 
in some measure in the effects of every one of the cul- 
tures. Civilization reached the Philippines in layers; 
but the stratification has long since become intricately 
displaced, nonconformable, and complexly interwoven. 



PEOPLES OF PHILIPPINES 

CHRISTIAN 
^B CAGAYAN or I8ANAG 
MK ILOKANOCincludin^lSINAIandBATAN) 
— PANGASINAN 
I I SAMBAL 
^B PAHPANGA 
Wi TAGALOG 
^H BIKOL 
^U BISAYA 

MOHAMMEDAN 
■■ noRO 

PAGAN 
J— 2 Th.t,ii...t„.Hi,™u„.„,i„ 

PAGAN NEGRITO 

I I NEGRITO 



L * 




ft ,. .. i% 



'I 



BI\.LIOGRAPHY 

Barrows, D. P. A History of the Philippines. Indianapolis, [1905]. — 
A useful little volume, notable for the perspective of its background. 

Barton, R. F. Ifugao Law (University of California Publications in 
American Archaeology and Ethnology, volume 15, No. 1, Berkeley, 
1919) . — The best * tise on this tribe or topic. 

Benedict, Laura W. A Study of Bagobo Ceremonial, Magic, and 
Myth (Annals, New York Academy of Sciences, volume 25, New York, 
1916). — The most intensive study of Filipino religion yet made. 

Beyer, H. Otley. Population of the Philippine Islands in 1916. 
Manila, 1917. — Includes an invaluable little encyclopaedia of tribes, 
and is probably the most important work of reference ever compiled 
on Philippine ethnology. 

Blair, E. H., and Robertson, J. A. The Philippine Islands, 1493- 
1803, volumes 1-55. Cleveland, 1903-1909. — An enormously valuable 
collection and translation from Spanish sources, containing all the 
important documents of early ethnology, including the accounts of 
Magellan, Legazpi, Artieda, Chirino, Morga, Combes, etc. 

Bltjmentritt, F. Diccionario Mitologico. (In W. E. Retana, Archivo 
del Bibhofilo Fihpino, volume 2, Madrid, 1896.) 

Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen. Gotha, 1882. 

Census OF the Philippine Islands, 1903, 4 volumes, Washington, 1905.- 
Volume 1, Geography, History, and Population, is particularly useful. 

Christie, E. B. The Subanuns of Sindangan Bay (Bureau of Science, 
Division of Ethnology, volume 6, No. 1, Manila, 1909). 

Cole, F. C. Traditions of the Tinguian (Field Museum of Natural 
History, Anthropological Series, volume 14, No. 1, Chicago, 1915.) — 
The fullest account of the mythology of any one people. 

The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao (Field Museum of 
Natural History, Anthropological Series, volume 12, No. 2, Chicago, 
1913). — Best general description of the Mindanao pagans. 

Cole, F. C, and Laufer, B. Chinese Pottery in the Philippines (Field 
Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Series, volume 12, No. 1, 
Chicago, 1912). 

FoLKMAR, D. Album of Philippine Types. Manila, 1904. — Portraits 
and measurements. 

Jenks, a. E. The Bontoc Igorot (Ethnological Survey Publications, 
volume .1, Manila, 1905) .-^The most complete general account yet 
published of any pagan tribe ; particularly full on the side of economic 
life. 



216 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 

Laufer, B. The Relations of the Chinese to the PhiUppine Islands 
(Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, volume 50, Washington, 
1907.) 

Meyer, A. B. The Distribution of the Negritos in the Philippine 
Islands and Elsewhere. Dresden, 1899. 

Philippine Journal of Science. Volumes 1 following, Manila, 1906 
following. — To volume 4, anthropology is in Section A, from volume 5 
in Section D. 

Reed, W. A. Negritos of Zambales (Ethnological Survey Publications, 
volume 2, No. 1, Manila, 1905). — Fullest available description of any 
Negrito group in the islands. 

Saleeby, N. M. Studies in Moro History, Law, and Religion; The 
History of Sulu (Bureau of Science, Division of Ethnology, volume 4, 
nos. 1, 2, Manila, 1905, 1908).— Excellent works on the Moham- 
medans. 

Sullivan, L. R. Racial Types in the Philippine Islands (Anthropo- 
logical Papers, American Museum of Natural History, volume 23, 
part 1, New York, 1918). — A complete review of the subject, with 
reference to all data. 

Worcester, Dean C. Headhunters of Northern Luzon (National 
Geographic Magazine, volume 23, 1912). 

The Non-Christian Peoples of the Philippine Islands (National 
Geographic Magazine, vol. 24, 1913.) 

The Philippines Past and Present. 2 volumes. New York, 1914. 



INDEX 



Abaca, cloth, 118, 119, 120; fiber, 
118. 

Adolescence ceremonies, not re- 
ported, 148. 

Adultery, penalty for, 146, 152- 
153, 154. 

Aesthetic development, meager- 
ness of, 98. 

Aeta, 34. 

Agriculture, 26, 30, 39, 75-78; 
ceremonies for, 184; division of 
labor in, 144; implements em- 
ployed in, 30, 85; kaingin 
system of, 26, 81. 

Alphabets, Philippine, 64, 202, 
203. 

Altars, 96, 183. 

Altitudes, Philippine peaks, 22-24. 

American influence, on Philippine 
culture, 61, 213. 

Amusements, 55. 

Ancestor worship, 176-177. 

Animal, breeding, 76, 89; life, 
East Indies, 19; hfe, Philip- 
pines, 22; sacrifice, 78-79, 
152, 156, 157; skins, infrequent 
use of, 99. 

Animals, domesticated, 75-76, 78; 
souls attributed to, 179. 

Anito, 175-177, 205. 

Apayao, 59, 82, 129, 162, 169. 

Architecture, 91. 

Area, total Philippine, 17. 

Areca, cultivation of, 89. 

Arithmetical operations, 200. 

Armor, 170-173. 

Arrows, 165-167. 

Arson, penalty for, 155. 

Art, 205-207. 

Astronomy, 199-200. 



Ata, 63. 

Ato, institution of, 41, 61, 97. 
Augury, 152, 190-192. 
Ax, 107, 164. 

Babuyanes Islands, 102. 

Bagobo, 43, 58, 63, 70, 83, 90, 95, 
107, 109, 120, 121, 123, 128, 
129, 144, 145, 162, 169, 179, 
180, 186, 187, 188, 190, 201, 207. 

Bajao, 57. 

Bamboo, implements of, 106; use 
of, 98. 

Banana, cultivation of, 88. 

Barangay community, 134-137. 

Bark fibers, cloth of, 120. 

Barong, 111. 

Barrios, 97-98. 

Basket materials, 117, 118. 

Baskets, 40, 114-118. 

Batak, 34, 40. 

Batanes, 54, 10'2. 

Beans, cultivation of, 87. 

Benguet Igorot, 61. 

Betel, boxes, 113; chewing, 89. 

Betrothal, (Jeremonies, 184; child, 
144-145. 

Bikol, 53, 178. 

Bilaan, 63. 

Biological division, of the East 
Indies, 19. 

Bisaya, 44, 52-53, 58, 64, 99, 109, 
121, 123, 124, 128, 129, 130, 
138, 140, 144, 162, 168, 175, 
178,185, 196,200,201,203. 

Bisayan dialects, 72. 

Black peoples, 31-42. 

Blood money. 111, 163. 

Blowguns, 40, 168. 

Boats, 102-103. 



217 



218 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



Bolo, 108, 111. 

Bontok, 58, 59-61, 70, 81, 82, 93, 
97, 99, 100, 107, 112, 129, 135, 
138, 140, 141, 144, 147, 158, 
161, 162, 165, 169, 183, 200. 

Borneo, 18, 21, 42, 109, 111. 

Bows, 40, 165-167. 

Brass, introduction of, 109; pipes, 
trade in, 160; use of. 111, 112, 
115. 

Breadfruit, cultivation of, 88. 

Breechclout, 121, 123. 

Bronze, importation of Chinese, 
12, 111. 

Brown peoples, 38, 42. 

Buffalo, 78. 

Bukidnon, 34, 83, 105. 

Burial jars, 102. 

Cagayan, 54, 59, 62, 94, 129, 162. 

Calendars, 199. 

Camote, cultivation of, 76, 86- 
87. 

Cannon, Moro, 172. 

Canoes, outrigger, 102-103. 

Carvings, in wood, 99. 

Casting, in metal, 112. 

Catholicism, 55. 

Cattle, introduction of, 78. 

Celebes, 18, 21. 

Ceremonial, building, 96; motives, 
183-184. 

Ceremonies, 182-183; agricul- 
tural, 184; betrothal, 184; 
connected with sale of inherited 
property, 156; curing, 183; 
formulas recited as parts of, 
194-195; general welfare, 184; 
human head necessary to con- 
duct of, 161; for the production 
of rice, 80; rich men's, 157; 
sacrifice, important factor in, 79. 



Charms, 186, 189. 

Checker weave, 115. 

Childbirth taboos, 147. 

Chinese, influence in the Philip- 
pines, 12, 54, 101-102, 213; 
racial characterization of, 42. 

Christian nationalities, in the 
Philippines, 47, 51-56. 

Christianity, changes caused by 
conversion to, 9, 10. 

Cire perdue, process of casting, 
112. 

Civilization, Philippine, complex- 
ity of, 212-214; development of, 
7-13; stratification of, 7-13, 
214. 

Clams, as food, 88, 89. 

Clans, 141, 142. 

Classes, social, 87, 138-142. 

Climate, Philippine, 22-26. 

Cloth, pitM, 90, 120; trade in, 
160; weaving, 90, 118-121, 205. 

Clothing, Christian peoples, 55; 
men's, .121-128; Negrito, 39- 
40; women's, 128-129. 

Coats, 121, 123; women's, 128- 
129. 

Coconut palm, cultivation of, 88, 
90. 

Codes, law, 62, 133, 148-155. 

Coiling, 117-118. 

Conquest, Spanish, 9, 26, 55, 57, 
135-136, 160. 

Continental affiliations, Philip- 
pine Islands, 19. 

Cooking, 85. 

Cotabato, 56. 

Cotton, cultivation of, 90, 118. 

Councils, for conducting trials, 
149. 

Courtship, 155. 

Cousin marriage, 146-147. 



219 



Crimes, recognized, fines and resti- 
tution for, 148-149. 

Crops, commercial, cultivation of, 
26. 

Culture, Indonesian, 212; Malay- 
sian, 22, 212; Negrito, 14-15, 
37-42, 212; Philippine, Ameri- 
can influence on, 61, 213; 
Philippine, foreign influences 
on, 9-13; 212-214; Philippine, 
general characterization of, 
52, 55, 58-59, 61-63, 64; 
stratification of, 7-13, 214. 

Culverins, 173. 

Dairy products, not utilized, 78. 

Dato, 137, 138, 140, 149, 154. 

Day, divisions of the, 199-200. 

Death, ceremonies and customs 
connected with, 94, 126, 156, 
184. 

Debt of life, 161-164. 

Debts, payment and pledges for, 
156. 

Decoration, personal, 39; pot- 
tery, 100. 

Decorative art, 205. 

Descent, reckoning of, 134, 142, 
143. 

Dialects, Bisayan, 72; local, 67, 
68, 72-73. 

Disease, cause determined by 
omen, 189; ceremonies for 
curing, 183 ; methods of curing, 
187-188; spirits cause of, 186. 

Divination, 190-192. 

Divorce, 145, 146. 

Diivata, 175. 

Domestication, of animals, 75- 
76, 78-79. 

Earthquakes, 24, 91. 

East Indies, races of the, map, 20. 



Eclipses, beliefs as to causes, 199. 
Economic, changes, caused by 

Spaniards, 10; life, 155-159; 

valuations, among the Ifugao, 

159. 
Education, 9, 52. 
Exogamy, absence of, 141. 
Eye, Mongoloid, 42, 50. 

Fables, 196-197. 

Fees, paid to witnesses and agents, 

157-158. 
Fertility, Philippine Islands, 26. 
Festivals, semi-religious, 157. 
Fines, system of, 146, 147, 148- 

149, 153. 
Firearms, 173. 
Fire-making, 103-106. 
Fire piston, 104-105. 
Fire-saw, 103. 
Flint and steel, 105. 
Floor, Filipino houses, 91-92, 93. 
Flutes, 207, 209. 
Food, 75, 86-89; Negrito, 40, 89; 

offerings in spirit houses, 96; 

plants, 76, 86-89. 
Footwear 123. 
Forestation, 25-26. 
Formosa, 17, 21. 

Formulas, types of, 182, 194-195. 
Forts, Moro, 95. 

Gabi (or taro), cultivation of, 88. 
Gaddang, 54, 62, 92. 
Genealogies, preservation of, 140, 

141. 
Geography, Philippine, 17-21. 
Geological division, East Indies, 

19. 
Gimaras, 34. 

Glaze, on pottery, 99, 100, 101. 
Goats, introduction of, 78. 



220 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



Gods, 178-179. 

Gold, trade in, 160; working of, 

113-114. 
Gongs, Chinese, in the Phihppines, 

12, 1 1 1 ; of Mohammedan tribes, 

207, 208, 209. 
Granaries, 85, 95. 
Guitar, 207. 

Hair, form, 42; form, Indonesian, 

50-51; form, Negrito, 31, 50; 

method of wearing, 129-130. 
Habitat, Phihppine peoples, 34, 

52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62, 

63, 64. 
Haruspicy, 190-192. 
Hats, 124, 125. 
Head, cloths, 124-126; form, 31, 

43, 46, 47, 48, 50. 
Head-axes, steel, trade in, 160. 
Headband, 163. 
Head-hunting, 61, 161-164. 
Headwear, 123-128. 
Hearth, 93. 
Heavens, nine, recognized by 

Bagobo, 179. 
Helmets, 170, 171, 173. 
Hemp, cultivation of, 88, 90. 
Hepatoscopy, 190-191. 
Heroic romances, 193-194. 
Hill people, 35. 
Hindu, influence on Philippine 

culture, 10-12, 21, 58, 78, 87, 

136, 155, 178, 202. 
History, Philippine, 8-15. 
Horse, introduction of, 78. 
Houses, 24, 90, 94; Moro, 93; 

Negrito, 38-39; spirit. 96, 183; 

tree, 92. 
Hunting, life, 75, 76; snare, 77. 

Ibanag, 54. 



Ifugao, 29, 61, 80, 81-82, 83, 84, 

85, 87, 88, 97, 108, 129, 135. 

138, 140, 141, 144, 145, 146, 

147, 149, 150, 152 153, 156, 

157, 158, 161, 162, 169, 177, 

182, 183, 185, 194. 
Igorot, 13, 59-61, 83, 84, 85. 
Ilokano, 53-54, 59, 62, 99, 129, 

130, 162, 178. 
Ilongot, 62-63, 129, 165, 169. 
Indian influences, on Philippine 

culture, 10-11, 12, 21, 73, 91, 

201, 212-213. 
Indonesians, 42-51, 211. 
Indonesian languages, 69. 
Industries, general character of, 

98-99; localization of, 160. 
Inheritance, of property, 145, 156; 

of property and social position, 

133, 135; slaves, 139. 
Interest, on debts, 156-157. 
Interment, in pottery, 102. 
Iron industry, 106-111, 167. 
Irrigation, rice grown under, 61- 

62; systems, 81-85, 86. 
Isinai, 54. 

Japan, 84. 

Jars, pottery, 101. 

Java, 11, 28, 29, 42, 83-84, 91, 111. 

Jew's harp, 207. 

Kaingin system of agriculture, 26, 

81. 
Kalinga, 62, 82, 92, 107, 123, 129, 

146, 162, 168. 
Kampilan, 111. 
Kankanai, 59-61, 93, 114, 129, 

165. 
Kanlaon, 24. 
Kawi, 67. 
Khasi language, 73. 



221 



Kin, liability for crime of offender, 

150-151. 
Kinship, terminology, 134, 142, 

143, 151. 
Kingship, introduction of idea of, 

11, 56, 136, 137. 
Knives, types of, 111. 
Knowledge and art, 199-209. 
Kria, 111. 
Kulaman, 63. 

Labor, division of, 143-144. 

Ladders, 94. 

Language, African Negro, 36; 
Andamanese, 37; Batanes, 54; 
Ibanag, 54; Ifugao, 62; Malay- 
sian, 22; Moros, 56; Negrito, 
36-37; Philippine, 70-72, 211; 
Semang, 36, 37; Tagalog, 52, 58. 

Law, codes, 62, 133, 148-155. 

Literacy, in the Philippines, 9. 

Literature, native, 52. 

Lime boxes, patterns on, 206. 

Lineage, strong development of 
idea of, 140. 

Loom, 120. 

Luzon, 17, 28, 29, 30, 34. 

Machete, 111. 

Magic and medicine, 186-188. 
Magani or bagani, 163, 164. 
Maginoo, Tagalog name of ruling 

class, 140. 
Maize, cultivation of, 87, 90. 
Malacca, 111. 
Malay dialect, associated with 

spread of Mohammedanism, 

67-68. 
Malayans, 42, 49. 
Malayo-Polynesiari languages, 73, 

211. 
Malaysians, 13, 19, 21, 22, 211. 



Mamanua, 31, 34. 

Mandaya, 63, 83, 92, 107, 144, 162. 

Mangyan, 64, 90, 165, 185, 203, 
205, 214. 

Manguangan, 63. 

Manobo, 63, 83, 92, 162, 170. 

Manila Bay, establishment of 
Mohammedanism at, 9. 

Manila hemp, 88, 118. 

Marriage, cousin, 146-147; cus- 
toms, 144-148, 184; Negrito, 
41; trial, 146; uncle-niece, 147. 

Material sides of life, 75-131. 

Matting, 118. 

Mediums, or medicinemen, 144, 
185. 

Metal work, 106-111. 

Millet, cultivation of, 87. 

Milking, of buffalo, unknown, 78. 

Mindanao, 9, 17, 18, 34, 102. 

Mindoro, 9, 18, 30, 102. 

Mining, 107, 109. 

Mohammedan, influence on Phil- 
ippine culture, 9-10, 11, 13, 18, 
21, 59, 69, 78, 137-138, 142- 
143, 146, 149, 155, 213. 

Mohammedans, 48, 56-57, 112, 
129. 

Mongolian peoples, 21. 

Mongoloid physical type, 19, 22, 
42, 50-51, 54, 211. 

Mon-Khmer, group of languages, 
73. 

Monogamy, 146. 

Monteses, 35. 

Moros, 64, 92, 100, 103, 109, 111, 
121, 123, 128, 141. 

Mountain rice, 80, 81. 

Mountains, Phihppine, 22, 23, 24. 

Mount Apo, 24. 

Mount Halcon. 24. 

Mount Mayon, 24. 



222 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



Mourning customs, 126. 

Munda language, 73. 

Murders, penalties exacted for, 38, 

148, 152, 154. 
Music, 207-209. 

Musical instruments. 40, 41, 111, 

207-209. 
Mythology, 192-193. 
Myths, explanatory, 195-196. 

Nabaloi, 59-61, 81, 87, 93, 129, 

149, 162, 165, 169, 189, 194, 209. 
Namamahay, slaves with establish- 
ments of their own, 139. 

Names, varieties of rice, 86. 
Nationalities, in the Philippines, 51 . 
Negrillos, 36. 
Negrito, 13-15, 31-42, 48, 64, 77, 

89, 94, 106, 107, 121, 130, 165, 

167, 168, 169, 185, 207, 209, 

211, 214. 
Negrito Batak, 129, 168. 
Negros, 18, 34. 
Nipa palm, 88. 
Nose, shape of, 31, 43, 47, 48, 

50, 51. 
Numbers, knowledge and use of. 

158, 200-201. 

Oaths, 151. 
Omens, 188-189. 
Ord'eals, 151-152, 189-190. 
Ornaments, 114, 127. 
Outrigger canoes, 102-103. 

Paddles, 103. 

Pagan tribes, 48, 57-64. 
Palawan, 18-19, 30, 34, 103. 
Palmistry, 190. 
Palms, edible, 88. 
Pampanga, 53, 83, 154, 203. 
Panay, 34. 



Pangasinan, 53, 54. 

Penalties, exacted for various 
crimes, 148-149, 150, 154-155. 

Peonage, 55. 

Personal property, 156. 

Physical type, Philippine peoples, 
13-14, 19, 22, 31, 35, 36, 42- 
47, 48-51, 54. 

Pina cloth, 90, 120. 

Pipes, types of, 112. 

Piracy, 103. 

Pledges, recognized for loans, 156. 

Plow, introduction of, 85. 

Polillo, 34. 

Political organization, 11-12, 31, 
56, 135-136, 137. 

Polygamy, introduction of, 146. 

Population, Philippine groups, 7, 
29, 34, 46-47, 52, 53, 55, 56, 
58, 61, 62, 63, 96-97; concen- 
tration on the coast, 78; density 
of, 27, 28, 29, 30, 82-83; 
geographical distribution of, 
24; Java, 29; past, present, and 
estimated future, 26-31. 

Potter's wheel, 99, 100. 

Pottery, 40, 99-102; Chinese in 
the Philippines, 12, 54, 101- 
102; decoration of, 205; trade 
in, 160. 

Potong, or head cloth, 124-126, 
128. 

Prayers, types of, 182-183. 

Property, importance of, 145, 156; 
valuations placed on, 158-159. 

Purchase, marriage by, 144. 

Pygmies, African, 36. 

Races, of the East Indies, 19-21. 
Racial, affiliations, Philippine 

peoples, 42 ; characteristics, 

211; types, 13, 14. 



223 



Rainfall, 25. 

Ranges, principal Philippine, 23. 

Rank, social, 142. 

Rattan, trade in, 160; use of, 98. 

Relationship, reckoning of, 134, 
142, 143, 151. 

Rehgion, 9, 10, 95-96, 175-197; 
importance of animal sacrifice 
in, 78-79; influence of Moham- 
medanism on, 9-10; Negrito, 
40, 41-42, 185. 

Religious, feasting, 78-79, '88; 
officials, 184-186; structures, 
95-96. 

Remarriage of the widowed, 146. 

Rhythm, in Philippine music, 
209. 

iCice, basis of reckoning values, 
158-159; ceremonies connected 
with growing of, 184; cultiva- 
tion of, 28, 39, 90; cultivation 
by irrigation, 61-62, 81-86; 
culture, 79-81; fields, renting 
and working of, 157; fields, 
values of, 157-158; granaries, 85, 
95; important place in Philip- 
pine culture, 80; planting, 199; 
varieties of, 80, 86. 

Rituals, connected with rice grow- 
ing, 80. 

Rivers, in the Philippines, 23. 

Roofs, Philippine houses, 91. 

Sacrifice, 94-96, 186; animal, 
78-79, 152, 156, 157; during 
marriage ceremony, 145; to 
extinguish debts of the dead, 
176; human, 162, 164; method 
of, 179-182; to terminate a 
taboo, 188. 

Sagigilid, slaves who were abso- 
lute property, 139. 



Sago palm, cultivation of, 88. 

Salt, trade in, 160. 

Samal, 57. 

Samal Laut, 57. 

Samar, 34. 

Sambal, 38, 53, 126, 129, 162, 

165, 178. 
Sangir Islands, 18. 
Sanskrit, words, in Philippine 

speech, 10, 58, 201-202. 
Sarong, woman's skirt, 128. 
Scarification, Negrito, 39, 130. 
Seasons, 25, 35, 36. 
Settlements, size of, 96-98. 
Sexes, equahty of, 142-145. 
Sheep, introduction of, 78. 
Shields, types and distribution of, 

168-170. 
Skin color, Philippine peoples, 31, 

42. 
Skin-dressing, art lacking, 99. 
Skirt, woman's, 128. 
Slavery, 41, 55, 135, 139. 
Smelting, not understood, 107- 

109. 
Social, grouping, 134; institu- 
tions, 142. 
Society, 10-12, 40-41, 133-173. 
Songs, 209. 
Soul, beliefs about the, 176, 179- 

180, 187. 
Spanish, conquest, 26, 55, 57, 

135-136, 160; influences on 

Philippine culture, 9, 30, 49, 

61, 69, 213. 
Spear, 164-165, 167. 
Speech, 67-74. 
Spirit houses, 96, 183. 
Spirits, beliefs about, 175-177. 
Spoons, carved, 207. 
Stature, Philippine peoples, 31, 

42, 46, 47, 48. 



224 



PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 



Steel, work in, 109, 111. 

Stone age culture, no evidence of, 

106. 
Storage, of harvest, 85, 95. 
Subanun, 47, 63, 99, 144, 147, 153. 
Sugar cane, cultivation of, 88. 
Sultanates, 56. 
Sulu, 18, 56, 70. 
Suyok, 114. 

Symbolism, lack of, 183. 
Swamp rice, 80. 
Sweet potato, cultivation of, 76, 

86-87. 
Swords, types of, 110, 111, 167. 

Taboos, 147, 186-188. 

Tagakaolo, 63. 

Tagalog, 34, 45, 52, 53, 58, 62, 64, 
72, 83, 95, 96, 99, 109, 121, 123, 
124, 128, 129, 130, 138, 139, 
140, 144, 146, 147, 162, 165, 
168, 175, 178, 185, 196, 200, 201, 
202, 203, 214. 

Tagbanua, 64, 168, 186, 203, 205. 

Taro, 88. 

Tapa, manufacture and distribu- 
tion of use, 120-121. 

Tattooing, 39, 52, 130. 

Teeth, filing, 39, 130-131. 

Tempering, understood in metal 
work, 109. 

Temperature, 25. 

Terrace irrigation, 61-62, 81-86. 

Textiles, 90, 118-121. 

Theft, penalty for, 153-155. 

Tie-dyeing, 120. 

Timawa, 140. 

Tinggian, 59, 95, 97, 99, 104, 107, 
123, 129, 144, 146, 147, 149, 
162, 165, 168, 182, 193, 194, 195. 

Tirurai, 63. 

Tobacco, cultivation of, 87; in- 
troduction of, 89-90; trade in, 
160. 



Topography, 22-26, 58-59, 72. 
Totemism, absence of, 141. 
Trade, 12, 37, 59, 111-112, 160. 
Traditions, relating to genealogies, 

140. 
Tree house, 39, 92. 
Trees, yielding edible fruits, 88. 
Trials, 151, 154, 159. 
Trousers, introduction of, 123. 
Twilling, 115, 117. 
Twining, 118. 
Typhoons, 24. 

Vegetable condiments, 86. 
Vegetation, 25-26. 
Villages, size of, 96-98. 
Volcanoes, 24. 

Walls, house, 94. 

Warfare, 154, 160-161. 

War vessels, construction of, 103. 

Wealth, important feature in 

rank, 138; degrees of, 157-158. 
Weapons, 10, 40, 109, 111, 164- 

173. 
Weaving, 90, 115, 118-121, 205. 
Wheel, absence of knowledge of, 

78. 
Wicker weave, 115. 
Windows, house, 94. 
Wine, fermented from rice, sugar 

cane, or palm, 88. 
Witchcraft, 148, 152. 
Woman, position of, 142, 144, 145, 

148. 
Women, as mediums, 185. 
Woodwork, 98-99. 
Worship, association with food 

and drink, 180-182. 
Writing, 64, 140, 203-205. 

Zambales Negrito, 41. 



H 276 85 li 




Hi. 






'0^ 



v> <^ *?^:T^ G^ ^. 



* .G* o^ "^.T*" A 






" ^ A*" 



.^^ 



.^ c^ sy ^s." -o- 



-« 









-f o 



0^ «>1V' ^P^- 



C^ A 





\,^^ /Jfe\ \../ MM^ '%.J 



■3^r 






'* -*'^* "V °-'*'^%'*'-* . 'i^' "^^ 







•» o 




<^ * o « 



V-^' 



'u>«b- 



.-^^ . 











o v 

I „ * * " "" 





^^ ^^ ^V^\>^/ .V 








>?'> ■« 

'^o^ 




c** : 




%.,^^ 




%'& 




■' '-.^'S' 










•^^^ 



